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One of the main benefits of choosing WordPress is that you can quickly expand your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

(Just like you can find social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A plugin is like an app. You download and install a software that adds new functionality to your WP site …

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

Typically, if you want to add new features to an existing site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this could become quite expensive, especially if website developers have to create new code or modify code or install scripts to integrate into your current site.

This is also applicable when starting a website. Companies will often pay for added features they may not need.

To save money and keep your business costs to a minimum, we recommend a modular strategy when developing your web presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get your business website up and running fast, then …

2) As the need arises, simply install new applications with a few mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your website, and give your website or blog a whole new range of practical capabilities, and …

3) Cost not a single dollar extra to add to your web site?

Well, that’s just what WP plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

Earlier, we compared WordPress plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, the same applies to plugins.

In fact, thousands of great plugins are available at no cost to users.

Plugins that you buy are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of paying for web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, anybody can create, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed many professional software developers to enhance the WPsoftware.

• Plugins allow you to start simply with just a simple yet professional web site and then expand only as required.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically endless features to any website easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give you almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a web presence that they can manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site instant new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more extensive features and require some initial configuration.

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

Just like themes, loads of plugins are available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that will do just about anything you need a website to do.

Plugin categories cover:

• Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting
• Securing Your WP Web Site

For example, you can expand your WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to Norwegian)
• 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
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your website
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect website pages
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Import information from different CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your pages
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add location maps
• Distribute your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you practically endless business scalability. If you are planning to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing web site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider choosing it 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 installing an inexpensive plugin on your site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional membership site with separate login details for users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your business site in lots of different ways. From adding features that improve your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

You can also add complex features to your website using inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate functions on your site such as user feedback and event bookings management …

And also run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to code custom functionality for you …

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

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team using forums or even set up a private social network on your site.
• Engage with members of your team via live video chats
• Dial your business from their devices while visiting your pages
• Get help via a dedicated user helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex “back end” applications using a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to control the content that your visitors will see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technical side of things …

WP Plugins – Some Useful Tips

• There are many great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will affect your site’s performance and page loading times. It can also create more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential errors.
• Install only the plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these also utilize resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid WordPress plugins, ensure that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we provide here for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. WordPress is updated often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause errors.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Older plugins not only can cause errors and conflicts, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded web publishing application in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is a feature you need for your web site, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do just what you need it to do, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be reasonably inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance such a WP plugin is not available, then it can probably be created for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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