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One of the main advantages of using WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WP site’s functionality using inexpensive (even free) applications called plugins.

About WordPress Plugins

No doubt, you most likely use a device like a cell phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new application, game or business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is easy to install and integrates new functionality into a smart phone.

(Just like you will find social sharing apps …)

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

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

Typically, adding a new feature to your site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancement, this could become quite expensive, especially if web developers have to add new code or modify programs or install scripts to integrate into your existing set up.

This also applies to creating a new website or business blog. Businesses sometimes fork out money in advance on features and customizations they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a sustainable strategy when developing your web presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a basic, professional-looking web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need arises, install new applications with a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate with your website and blog, and give your web site an entirely new and expanded range of useful functionality, and …

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

Well, that’s exactly what a WordPress plugin lets you do!

Benefits Of Using Plugins

We started this article by comparing WP plugins with mobile apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, so do WP plugins.

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

Plugins that you buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are priced quite low.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any part of the code. This has enabled many third-party web development companies to build more applications that plug seamlessly into WordPress than you can imagine.

• Plugins allow you to start off with a simple yet professional online business presence and then expand as necessary.
• Plugins let you add almost endless functionality to your website easily, quickly and quite inexpensively.
• Plugins give you almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to own a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more extensive features and require some configuring.

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

Like many themes, tens of thousands of WP plugins are available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WP plugins that will do almost anything you could think of.

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Management
• Content Management
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Managing Media Files – Videos, Graphics & Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Advertising Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting
• Optimizing Your

You can enhance your business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Import content from different publishing applications
• Search and replace data
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Insert scripts and script elements into your posts
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add a map
• Distribute your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

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

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete paid membership site with separate login details for each member …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your web site in so many ways. From adding functionality that enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To increasing your site’s reach across multiple social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated features to your site using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can install plugins that integrate and automate processes on your pages like managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And even run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to design similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can increase your site’s interactivity …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other members using forums or even set up an online community on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live webcam conferencing and chatrooms
• Dial your business directly from their devices when browsing your website
• Get help and support via a user help desk
• And much more …

You can even integrate complex “back end” solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological functions …

Useful Things To Know About WordPress Plugins

• There are so many fantastic plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will begin to affect your site’s resources and site loading times. It also means more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid WordPress plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our WP plugin recommendations for additional useful 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 on your website or blog. WordPress is updated often and older plugins that have not been updated can create errors.
• Ensure to always keep all plugins updated. Outdated plugin not only can create issues, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their website without spending thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing about WP plugins:

If there is any feature you want for your website, you can guarantee that a WordPress plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you need, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost will be very reasonable.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you would like it to do can certainly be created for your business for a reasonable price.

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

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