Category: WordPress 101

One of the main benefits of using the WordPress platform is that you can quickly and easily enhance your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is simple and easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into a mobile device.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very much like an app. You simply install and activate a little piece of software that adds new functionality to your site …

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

Generally, if you need to expand the functionality of a website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, this could get fairly expensive, especially if web developers need to add new code or edit templates or develop scripts to integrate into your current set up.

This also applies to starting a new website or business blog. Business owners will often pay money up-front for additional components they may not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend using a modular approach to growing a digital presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As the need becomes apparent, simply add new software modules with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from your dashboard area, giving your web site an entirely new range of possibilities, and …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to download and install on your web site?

Well, that’s exactly what WordPress plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

I started this post by comparing WordPress plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, the same is true of WP plugins.

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

WP plugins that you have to 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 plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, anyone can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed thousands of third-party web developers to create more applications that enhance WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with a basic website and then add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to your website quickly, easily and cheaply.
• Plugins give you virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a digital presence that they can manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website with new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins offer more advanced options and could require some configuration.

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

Just like WP themes, tens of thousands of plugins are available for WP users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that can do just about everything you could possibly need your site to do.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Website Administration
• Content Syndication
• Increasing Web Visitors
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Securing Your WordPress Website

You can add features to your WordPress site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter 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 Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Migrate data from different publishing platforms
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Inserting scripts and code elements into your content
• 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 a map of your business location
• Publicize your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you virtually endless business flexibility. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing website isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by simply adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make an area of your post or page inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for all users …

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

To extending your business reach across multiple social networks and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your site like managing 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 web developers to create similar functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will allow you to engage even more with your web visitors, clients and registered site users …

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on social networks.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team members using forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
• Engage with your support team using live chats
• Call your business directly from their laptops when visiting your website
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated “back end” applications within a WP “front end”. This lets you control your business marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological areas …

Useful Things You Should Know About Plugins

• There are many plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will affect your website’s resources and page loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins often receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it. WordPress changes often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Ensure to always maintain your plugins updated. Older plugin not only can cause problems, they may also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a WordPress plugin already exists that will do what you want, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be very reasonable.

(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 want it to do can most certainly be created for your business for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins are and how they can improve your business blog. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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