Author: WP Compendium

One of the main benefits of building a digital business presence with WordPress is that you can quickly increase your WP web site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

About WordPress Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is simple and easy to install and immediately adds new features to your smart device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very similar to an app. You simply install and activate a software application that provides new functionality to your WordPress web site …

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

Generally, if you decide to add a new feature to your website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this cost can be significant, particularly if it requires modifying code.

This also applies when starting a new web site. Businesses will often invest up front in added features they probably will never need.

For this reason, we suggest a sustainable approach to growing a website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As new features become necessary, add new applications with only a few mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your website, and give your web site a completely new range of possibilities, and …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to install on your site?

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

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

We began this article by comparing WP plugins with apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, so do plugins.

In fact, many great plugins are available at no cost to WP users.

Plugins that you have to buy are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, as WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any web developer can create, modify and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has enabled thousands of professional software development professionals to build more tools that integrate with WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins allow you to get started with just a basic online business presence and expand as required.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited features to any web presence quickly, easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give you practically endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to own a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more advanced features and may need some initial configuring.

WordPress Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Many Of Them Are) Completely FREE!

Like many WP themes, loads of WP plugins are currently available to WP users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WordPress plugins that can do almost everything you want done.

There are WP plugins for:

• User Management
• Content Syndication
• Increasing Site Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Website Security

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

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Automatic language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website 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.
• Cloud storage management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Import information from non-WP platforms
• Perform bulk content edits
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Insert scripts and script elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you virtually limitless business scalability. If you are planning to build a website, or your existing website isn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit by simply adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your page inaccessible, or create a professional paid membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your website in so many ways. From installing functionality that enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to review site data …

To extending your business visibility across various social sites and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate functions on your site such as customer testimonial and event registrations management …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying software developers to code custom functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will make your site even more interactive …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team members through forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team via live chats
• Dial your business from their mobile phones when visiting your website
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex third-party applications with a WP “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technical side of things …

Some Useful Things To Know About Plugins

• There are so many plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can start to affect your site’s resources and site loading speed. It can also create more maintenance work for you resulting from possible errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WordPress plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for more information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. The WordPress software updates frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Always maintain all plugins updated. Older plugins not only can create errors and conflicts, they may also contain security 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 preferred CMS in the world. 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 costs.

One last thing on the topic of WP plugins:

If there is a feature or functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you want, and that this plugin can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be quite reasonable.

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you need it to do can certainly be coded for you for a reasonable price.

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

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