Author: WP Compendium

One of the main benefits of using the WordPress platform is that you can easily enhance your WordPress web site’s functionality using applications called ’plugins’.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you most likely have a device like a cell phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your device like a new application, software or tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is very easy to install and immediately integrates new features and functionality into a smart device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is very much like an app. You simply install a software application that provides new functionality to your site …

(… you can also find social sharing plugins for WP users!)

Typically, expanding the functionality of your site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, this cost can be quite significant, particularly if website developers need to add new code or modify programs or develop programs to integrate into your current site.

This is also applicable to creating a web site. Organizations often invest money up front in extra features they may not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest considering a modular approach to growing a website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a basic, professional web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need for new features and functionality becomes apparent, install new software modules with just a few mouse clicks that integrate with your website, giving your site a whole new range of features and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to download and install on your website?

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

Benefits & Advantages Of Using Plugins

I began this article by comparing plugins with apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, the same is true for plugins.

In fact, many plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

WordPress plugins that you purchase are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite low.

Also, as WordPress makes its code available to everyone, anybody can create, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed many professional web developers to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins allow you to get started simply with a basic yet professional online business presence and then expand only if required.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically endless features to your website easily, quickly and cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give you practically endless expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow anyone to have a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and could require some configuration.

Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Many Are) 100% FREE!

Like WP themes, loads of great plugins are available for WP users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that will do just about everything you can possibly need your web site to do.

There are plugins for:

• User Management
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• WordPress Security

You can add features to your website with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Migrate data from non-WordPress platforms
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting code and script elements into your posts
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add business location maps
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you endless business scalability. If you are planning to build a website, or your existing website wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let me show you some practical uses of adding an inexpensive plugin to your web site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of a post inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for each user …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your web site in so many ways. From installing features that can enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To increasing your business visibility across a number of social sites and search engines …

You can also add advanced features to your site using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate functionality on your pages like customer feedback and event bookings management …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build these applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other customers using online forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Dial your business from their cellphones while visiting your pages
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex 3rd-party solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control your business sales and marketing, while your third-party application handles the technological functions …

WP Plugins – Additional Tips

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will start to affect your site’s performance and site loading speed. It can also create more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible errors.
• Install only those plugins you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also use server resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium WordPress plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide on this site for additional information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it on your site. WordPress is updated on a regular basis and out-of-date plugins can cause problems.
• Always maintain your plugins updated. Outdated plugin not only can cause problems, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making it the most preferred CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you want for your website, you can be sure that a WP plugin currently exists that will do just what you need it to do, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be reasonably inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance this WordPress plugin is not available, then it can certainly be coded for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WP plugins – what plugins are and how they can expand your web site. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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