Author: WP Compendium

One of the main benefits of using WordPress is the ability to easily enhance your WP site’s functionality using plugins.

About WordPress Plugins

No doubt, you probably have a mobile phone. What do you do when you want to access something new on your device like a new game or business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is very easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into a smart device.

(Just like you will find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is similar to an app. You simply download and install an application that provides new functionality to your WordPress website or blog …

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of your site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancements, the cost can be significant, especially if it requires website development.

This also applies when creating a new web site. Companies tend to invest money in advance in features and customizations they probably will never need.

To keep your costs low, we suggest a modular approach to developing your online presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get a web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As new features or functionality are required, add new applications with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from your WP dashboard panel, giving your website an entirely new range of useful features, and also …

3) Cost not one cent extra to install on your web site?

Well, this is just what a plugin allows you to do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits

Earlier, we compared plugins with mobile apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some may cost a little money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, thousands of wonderful plugins can be installed on your sites.

Plugins that you buy are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of investing in web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code publicly available, anybody can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled many third-party web developers to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

• WordPress plugins allow you to get started with a basic online business presence and then expand only as necessary.
• WP plugins allow you to add almost unlimited features to your web site quickly and quite cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give your website practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow non-technical website owners to own a site that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website or blog immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive options and could require some configuration.

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

Like many WP themes, loads of plugins are currently available for WordPress users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that will do just about everything you need done.

There are WP plugins for:

• User Management
• Content Management
• Driving Web Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Media
• Uploading Media Files – Videocasts, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Advertising Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting
• Securing Your WP Website

For example, you can enhance your business online presence with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect web pages
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content
• Import content from non-WP applications
• Perform bulk data edits
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Insert code and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add a map
• Publish your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a web site for your business, or your existing web site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by simply adding an inexpensive plugin to your web site.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with separate login details for users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your site in so many different ways. From adding functionality that can improve your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to analyze site metrics …

To increasing your site’s reach across many social networks and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your site using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate functionality on your site such as customer feedback and event registrations management …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to code these applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage more with visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networks.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team using forums or even set up a private online social network on your domain.
• Engage with your support team through live video chats
• Dial your business from their mobile phones when visiting your website
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

You can also integrate complex 3rd-party applications with a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your website, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological side of things …

Plugins – Useful Information

• There are many WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this can start to affect your website’s resources and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of potential conflicts.
• Install only those plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these utilize extra resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our WordPress plugin reviews for more helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it on your site. WordPress changes on a frequent basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Ensure that you always maintain your plugins updated. Older plugin not only can create issues, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable web management solution available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new functionality to their website without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing about plugins:

If there is any feature you want for your website, you can guarantee that a plugin currently exists that will do just what you want, and that this plugin can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be minimal.

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you want it to do can most certainly be written for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can enhance the functionality of your website. See our related posts to learn more about using WP plugins.

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