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One of the most unique advantages of building a website with the WordPress web site publishing platform is that you can quickly and easily expand your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

About WP Plugins

No doubt, you probably own a mobile phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your device like a new application, software or a business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is simple and easy to install and immediately integrates new features and functionality into your smart phone.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Normally, if you need to add a new feature to your site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, this can become quite expensive, especially if web developers need to create new code or modify programs or develop programs to integrate with your current set up.

This also applies to starting a web site. Organizations often pay money up-front for additional bells and whistles they may probably never need.

To keep your costs down, we suggest a modular approach to growing a presence online presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As more features and functionality are needed, install new applications with only a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from within your WordPress admin section, giving your website an entirely new range of useful features, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent extra to install on your website?

Well, this is just what a plugin lets you do!

Plugins – Benefits

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

In fact, many plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

WordPress plugins that cost money are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any web developer can create, edit and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has allowed many professional software developers to enhance the core WordPress software application.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with just a basic yet professional web presence and add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• Plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to any website quickly and inexpensively.
• WP plugins give you virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow business owners to have a site that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your site with immediate capabilities and features.
• Some plugins offer more extensive options and may need some configuring.

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

Just like themes, loads of plugins are currently available to WP users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that can do almost everything you need a web site to do.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Web Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting Applications
• WP Optimization

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

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Automatic 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 menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect users from specific pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Import data from other publishing platforms
• Search and replace data
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your pages
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Syndicate your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you endless business scalability. If you are planning to build a web site, or your existing web site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by simply 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 create a complete paid membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your web presence in so many different ways. From adding new features that can improve your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To extending your business reach and visibility across social media and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your website using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate features on your pages like managing customer testimonials and event registration details …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build custom functionality for you …

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

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team through forums or even set up an online community on your site.
• Engage with members of your team through live chats
• Dial your business directly from their mobile phones when visiting your pages
• Get help via a dedicated user helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated enterprise-level solutions using a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your website, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological functions …

WP Plugins – Some Useful Information

• There are loads of WordPress plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this will invariably affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance work for you as a result of potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really plan to use. Delete all inactive plugins from your site, as these also utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WP plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we provide on this site for more expert information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it on your website. The WordPress core application changes on a frequent basis and older plugins that have not been updated can create issues.
• Ensure that you always update your plugins to the latest version. Older plugin not only can cause problems, they may also have 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 used CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant features to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing on the topic of WP plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web site, you can be sure that a plugin already exists that will do just what you need it to do, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be fairly affordable.

(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 would like it to do can probably be written for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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