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One of the main benefits of the WordPress software is the ability to quickly and easily increase your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you most likely have a smart phone. What happens when you would like access to something new on your device like a new application, game or tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

(Just as you will find social sharing apps for smart devices …)

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

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

Normally, if you plan to add new features to your site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancement, this can get quite expensive, particularly if website developers have to create new code or modify programs or develop programs that integrate with your current site.

This is also applicable when starting a new website or business blog. Many companies will often invest in features or options they may simply not need.

For this reason, we suggest a cost-effective strategy to developing a web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As new features and functionality are needed, install new software modules with a few mouse clicks directly from your WP administration section, to give your web site a completely new range of possibilities, and also …

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

Well, this is precisely what WP plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

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

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

WordPress plugins that you purchase are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of paying for web development services to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has enabled many professional web developers to build more new plugins that add new functionality to the WordPress platform than you can possibly imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to start simply with a simple web presence and then add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to your web site easily, quickly and very inexpensively.
• WP plugins give your web site almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to own a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more advanced and may need some initial configuring.

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WP plugins that can do almost everything you want done.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Blog Management
• Content Management
• Driving Web Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Media
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Site Security

You can expand your business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect website pages
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content sections
• Migrate content from non-WordPress applications
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Inserting scripts and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebars
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you endless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing website isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by simply installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for each member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your business site in lots of ways. From adding features that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to review visitor data …

To extending your site’s reach across many social media and search engines …

You can also add advanced features to your site using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your pages such as displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying software developers to build the same functionality for you …

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

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team members via online forums or even set up an online community on your site.
• Engage with your support team using live chats
• Dial your business from their mobile phones when browsing your website
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise solutions with a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors will see on your website, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Plugins – Additional Things To Know

• There are loads of great plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really need to use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these utilize extra server resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WordPress plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we publish here for additional 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 using it. The WordPress core software changes on a regular basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Ensure to always upgrade your plugins to their most recent version. Outdated plugin not only can cause issues, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular web open source application available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing about plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web site, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do what you want it to do, and that it can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost will be reasonable.

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then one can probably be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can help improve your blog. See our related posts section to learn about more popular WP plugins that we recommend using.

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