Category: WordPress 101

One of the most powerful benefits of the WordPress content management platform is that you can quickly increase your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is really simple and easy to install and integrates new functionality into any mobile device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps for mobile phones …)

A WP plugin is really similar to an app. You install a little piece of software that provides new functionality to your website …

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

Almost always, if you need to add a new feature to an already-built site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, the cost can be fairly significant, especially if website developers need to create new code or edit programs or install scripts to integrate with your current set up.

This is also applicable to developing a new web site. Organizations sometimes pay money up front for features they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a cost-effective approach to setting up your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a professional web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As you need new features, just add new software modules with only a couple of mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your website, giving your website a completely new and expanded range of possibilities, and …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to install on your website?

Well, that’s just what WP plugins allow you to do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits

I began this article by comparing plugins with apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, so do plugins.

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

WordPress plugins that you have to buy are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress is an Open Source application, any web developer can create, rewrite and customize any part of the code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software developers to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

• WordPress plugins allow you to start off simply with a simple yet professional site and then add new features and enhancements to your site when necessary.
• Plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to any web presence quickly and quite inexpensively.
• WP plugins give your website virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to have a web presence that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced options and could require some initial configuring.

Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Many Are) 100% FREE!

Just like themes, loads of great plugins are available to WP users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that will do just about everything you need done.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Site Administration
• Content Distribution
• Driving Web Visitors
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Inserting Media – Videos, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Advertising Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Securing Your

You can enhance a website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Display ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Automatic language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect affiliate links
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate data from non-WP platforms
• Perform bulk data edits
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting scripts and code elements into your content
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map of your business location
• Publicize your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a website or blog, or your existing web site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by simply adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post inaccessible, or create a complete paid membership site with separate login details for all users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your business site in so many ways. From adding features that improve your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to analyze site data …

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

You can also add sophisticated features to your site using relatively inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate functions on your site like customer testimonial and event registration management …

And also set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to create these functionality for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other online users through online forums or even set up an online social network on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Call your business from their laptops while browsing your website
• Get help via a dedicated client support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated “back end” applications using a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Additional Information About WP Plugins

• There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this can affect your site’s performance and page loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of possible errors.
• Only keep those plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also use server resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid WordPress plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for more helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it on your website or blog. The WordPress application changes regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Ensure to always keep all plugins updated. Older plugin not only can cause conflicts, they may also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing on the subject of plugins:

If there is any functionality you want for your website, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already developed one that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin is not available, then one can probably be created for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can help to improve your business blog. See our related posts section to learn about more great WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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