Category: WordPress 101

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

What Are WordPress Plugins?

No doubt, you probably use a smart phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your phone like a new software or a productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is very simple and easy to install and instantly adds new features and functionality to a mobile device.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps for smart phones …)

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

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

Typically, if you plan to expand the functionality of your website, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, things can become fairly expensive, particularly if website developers need to add new code or edit code or develop scripts that integrate with your existing site.

This also applies to starting a new website or business blog. Organizations sometimes pay for added features and customizations they may simply not need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend a cost-effective approach to growing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As more features become necessary, simply add new applications with only a few mouse clicks directly from within your WP administration area, and give your website or blog a completely new range of practical capabilities, and also …

3) Cost not one cent more to install on your website?

Well, this is exactly what a WordPress plugin allows you to do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

We started this article by comparing WP plugins with apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, so do WordPress plugins.

In fact, thousands of 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 cost of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any person can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed many professional software developers to create more plugins that “plug into” the WordPress platform than you can probably imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to get started with only a simple web site and expand if necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to any web site quickly, easily and very inexpensively.
• Plugins give you virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to have a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more advanced and may need some initial configuration.

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

Like many WordPress themes, loads of great plugins are currently available to WP users … for FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WP plugins that will do almost anything you can imagine.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• User Administration
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Managing Media – Video, Graphics, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Advertising Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting
• Optimizing Your WP Site

For example, you can expand a WP site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages 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
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect users from certain pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content
• Migrate data from different CMS platforms
• Perform bulk content edits
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your blog’s header and footer
• Add tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Syndicate your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically limitless business flexibility. If you are planning to build a website or blog, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by adding an inexpensive plugin to your web site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can use plugins to make a section of your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your website in lots of ways. From installing features that can enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

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

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate functionality on your website like managing customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to build custom functionality for you …

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

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your support staff using forums or even set up a private community on your own domain.
• Engage with your support team via live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business from their mobile phones when visiting your website
• Get help and support via a dedicated client helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated enterprise applications with a WP “front end”. This allows you to control the content that your visitors will see on your website, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological areas …

Useful Things You Should Know About Plugins

• There are so many great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this will affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It can also create more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we publish here for more information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it on your website or blog. WordPress changes frequently and outdated WP plugins can cause issues.
• Ensure to always keep your plugins upgraded to the most recent version. Older plugin not only can cause issues, they may also have security 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 it the most popular content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing about plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a WordPress plugin currently exists that will do what you need, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be surprisingly affordable.

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

And, if by chance this plugin does not exist, then one can probably be written for you for a reasonable price.

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

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