Author: WP Compendium

One of the most powerful benefits of the WordPress web site publishing software is the ability to quickly and easily enhance your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

Like most people, you probably have a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you want to access something new on your phone like a new application, game or a business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is very simple and easy to install and instantly adds new features to a mobile device.

(Just like you can find social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is like an app. You install and activate a little piece of software that adds new functionality to your WP website …

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WP!)

Typically, if you need to expand the functionality of a web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, the cost can be quite significant, especially if website developers need to create new code or modify templates or install programs to integrate with your existing set up.

This also applies to starting a website or business blog. Business owners often invest money in additional features they may simply not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest considering a cost-effective approach when growing a web presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get a basic, professional business website up and running fast, then …

2) As more features are needed, install new applications with just a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate with your current website, and give your website an entirely new and expanded range of useful functionality, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to add to your web site?

Well, this is just what WordPress plugins allow you to do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

Earlier, we compared plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some cost a little money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, thousands of powerful plugins are freely available for WP users.

Plugins that cost money are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of investing in web development services to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, because WordPress makes its code available to everyone, anyone can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled many professional software developers to enhance the core software application.

• WordPress plugins let you get started with a simple website and expand only as required.
• Plugins allow you to add almost endless functionality to your site easily and inexpensively.
• WP plugins give you virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your site new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins can be a little more complex and may require some configuration.

WP Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) Completely FREE!

Like WordPress themes, tens of thousands of great plugins are currently available to WordPress users … often at no cost!

You can download thousands of plugins from the Free WP Plugin Directory …

As previously mentioned, you can find WP plugins that will do almost anything you want done.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Syndication
• Driving Web Visitors
• User Interactivity
• Social Media
• Adding Media – Videos, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales & Marketing Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Analysis Applications
• WP Optimization

For example, you can enhance a website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your site
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect visitors from broken pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Migrate information from non-WordPress applications
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Insert scripts and script elements into your pages
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website for your business, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can use plugins to make a section of a post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your website in lots of different ways. From installing features that will enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to review website data …

To extending your site’s reach and visibility across social networks and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate functionality on your site like customer testimonial and event bookings management …

And also set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to design custom functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will allow you to engage in various ways with visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other customers via online forums or even set up an online social network on your domain.
• Engage with your staff using live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business directly from their cellphones when browsing your website
• Get support via a dedicated user helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated “back end” solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control your business marketing, while your third-party application handles the technical aspects …

WP Plugins – Additional Things You Should Know

• There are so many great WordPress plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this can affect your site’s resources and site loading speed. It also creates more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Install only the plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these also utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, ensure that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we provide on this site for more expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before installing it on your website. WordPress changes on a frequent basis and older plugins can cause conflicts.
• Make sure to always keep your plugins updated. Outdated plugins not only can create conflicts, they may also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is a feature or functionality you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already developed one that will do exactly what you need, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be fairly affordable.

(Whatever you need done, there’s a WordPress plugin for that!)

And, if by chance such a WP plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does just what you want it to do can probably be coded for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can help to improve your WP web site. See our published posts to learn about more great WP plugins that we recommend using.

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