Category: WordPress 101

One of the main advantages of using the WordPress website management software is the ability to quickly and easily increase your WordPress website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

Like most of us, you most likely use a mobile phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new software or business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is very easy to install and immediately adds new features and functionality to a smart device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A plugin is like an app. You download and install an application that adds new functionality to your web site …

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

Normally, expanding the functionality of your web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, the cost can be significant, particularly if it requires website development.

This is also applicable when starting a web site. Many business owners tend to invest money in components they may never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest a sustainable approach when growing a website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As the need for new capabilities or functionality arises, you can add new applications with just a few mouse clicks that integrate with your current web site, giving your website a completely new and expanded range of useful capabilities, and …

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

Well, that’s precisely what a plugin allows you to do!

Benefits Of Using Plugins

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

In fact, many useful plugins can be downloaded to your site at no cost.

Plugins that you purchase are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost of paying for web development services to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress makes its source code publicly available, anybody can create, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of professional software developers to create more new plugins that plug seamlessly into the WordPress engine than you can probably imagine.

• Plugins let you start off with just a basic yet professional website and add new features and enhancements to your site if required.
• WP plugins let you add practically unlimited features to your web site easily and quite cheaply.
• WP plugins give your online business presence virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow business owners to have a web presence that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more advanced and could require some initial configuring.

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

Just like themes, loads of great plugins are available for WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that can do almost everything you can possibly need your website to do.

There are WP plugins for:

• Website Administration
• Content Distribution
• Increasing Site Visitors
• User Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Adding Media Files – Videocasts, Graphics, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Analysis Applications
• Optimizing Your WordPress Web Site

You can expand a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (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
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content
• Migrate data from other CMS platforms
• Perform bulk content edits
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Insert scripts and script elements into your website’s header and footer
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Publicize your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

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

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you want to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can install plugins to make a section of your post or page inaccessible, or create a complete paid membership site with personal login details for every member …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to enhance your site in so many ways. From installing new features that improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

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

You can also add complex features to your site using relatively inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate processes on your pages like user testimonial and event registrations management …

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

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

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow 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 additional exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team members using online forums or even set up an online community on your domain.
• Engage with your team using live chats
• Call your business directly from their cellphones while browsing your pages
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated “back end” solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors will see on your website, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Plugins – Some Useful Things To Know

• There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will begin to affect your website’s performance and page loading times. It can also mean more maintenance work for you resulting from possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really need to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WordPress plugins, make sure 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 some of the plugin reviews we publish here for additional information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it. WordPress changes on a regular basis and older plugins that have not been updated can create errors.
• Always keep your plugins updated. Older plugin not only can create errors and conflicts, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular website open source software in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing on the subject of plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your website, you can be sure that a plugin already exists that will do just what you need it to do, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you want it to do can probably be created for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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