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One of the most powerful advantages of using the WordPress platform is the ability to quickly enhance your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

About WordPress Plugins

Like most people, you probably have a device like a mobile phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your device like a new game or business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

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

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

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

Typically, adding a new feature to a website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this cost can be significant, particularly if website developers need to add new code or modify programs or develop programs to integrate into your existing site.

This is also applicable to starting a new website. Many companies tend to invest money upfront in added features they may not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest using a sustainable approach to growing your digital presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need new features, install new software modules with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from within your WordPress administration area, giving your web site an entirely new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent more to add to your website?

Well, this is exactly what WordPress plugins let you do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits

I began this blog post by comparing plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, the same applies to WP plugins.

In fact, loads of great plugins can be downloaded and installed on your sites.

WordPress 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 features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled many professional software developers to enhance the core WP software application.

• Plugins let you start simply with a simple site and then expand only if required.
• Plugins allow you to add practically unlimited functionality to any web site easily, quickly and inexpensively.
• Plugins give you virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a web presence 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 instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and may require some initial configuring.

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find WP plugins that will do just about anything you need done.

There are WP plugins for:

• Website Management
• Content Management
• Driving Web Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Optimizing Your

You can expand your WP site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Automatic language translation (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 engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect website pages
• Monitor social conversations
• 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.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Migrate content from different CMS applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your content
• Add tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add location maps
• Publicize your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you limitless business scalability. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of your post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete membership site with customized login details for every user …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your business site in lots of ways. From installing functionality that can enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To increasing your business reach and visibility across social networks and search engines …

You can also add advanced features to your website using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate features on your website like displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And even set up a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to code the same applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage more with web visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other online visitors on social media.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other online users via forums or even set up a private social network on your site.
• Engage with members of your team using live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business from their smart phones when visiting your site
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex enterprise-level solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to control the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technological functions …

WordPress Plugins – Useful Things To Know

• There are so many plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this can start to affect your website’s resources and page loading times. It can also create more maintenance work for you as a result of possible conflicts.
• Install only those plugins you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we publish on this site for more expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before installing it. The WordPress core application is updated regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Always maintain your plugins up-to-date. Older plugin not only can cause conflicts, they could also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing about plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your web site, you can be sure that a plugin probably exists that will do just what you want it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance this WP plugin has not been created yet, then one can probably be developed for your business for a very reasonable price.

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

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