Author: WP Compendium

One of the main advantages of choosing the WordPress software is the ability to quickly increase your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most people, you probably use a smart phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your device like a new software or a new tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is simple and easy to install and immediately integrates new features into a mobile phone.

(Just like you can find social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is really similar to an app. You install a software application that provides new functionality to your WP website …

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WordPress sites!)

Normally, if you need to expand the functionality of an already-built website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, the cost can be fairly significant, especially if website developers need to create new code or edit programs or develop scripts to integrate with your existing site.

This is also applicable to creating a new website. Business owners sometimes invest upfront for bells and whistles they may simply not need.

To minimize expenses, we recommend using a modular approach when setting up a presence online presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply with minimal cost involved. Get a professional-looking web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As you need more features, install new applications with only a few mouse clicks that integrate with your website or blog, and give your website or blog a whole new and expanded range of practical capabilities, and …

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

Well, this is exactly what a WordPress plugin enables you to do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Plugins

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with mobile apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, the same applies to WP plugins.

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

WP plugins that you purchase are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of buying a Premium WordPress plugin to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress makes its code publicly available, any person can create, modify and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has enabled many professional software development professionals to build more new applications that enhance WordPress than you can imagine.

• Plugins let you get started with a basic site and then expand only if required.
• WP plugins let you add almost unlimited features to your web presence quickly, easily and very cheaply.
• WP plugins give your website almost endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to own a web presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your site immediate capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and may require some configuration.

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

Just like themes, thousands of great WordPress plugins are available for WP users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that can do almost everything you need your web site to do.

There are plugins for:

• Web Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Media
• Inserting Media – Video, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Advertising Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Optimizing Your

You can add features to your website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect users from old pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate information from non-WP applications
• Perform bulk content edits
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting code and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map of your business location
• Syndicate your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website, or your existing site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

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

For example, if you want to publish private content, you can use plugins to make an area of a post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with customized login details for users …

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

To increasing your business reach across multiple social media and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate processes on your pages such as managing customer testimonials and booking events …

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

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will allow you to engage even more with your web visitors, customers and registered site members …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team through forums or even set up an online community on your site.
• Engage with members of your team using live webcam conferencing and chatrooms
• Call your business directly from their devices when visiting your website
• Get support via a customer support helpdesk
• And much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated enterprise-level applications within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control your business sales and marketing, while your third-party application handles the technological functions …

Useful Tips About Plugins

• There are loads of good plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can invariably begin to affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you resulting from possible errors.
• Only keep those plugins that you really plan to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins often receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium WordPress plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it. WordPress is updated regularly and older WordPress plugins can cause issues.
• Ensure that you always maintain all plugins updated to the latest software version. Outdated plugin not only can cause issues, they could also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most used website open source platform available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

If there is a feature or functionality you want for your web site, you can be sure that a plugin currently exists that will do just what you want it to do, and that it can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be reasonable.

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

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

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what plugins are and how they can to improve your website. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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