Category: WordPress 101

One of the most unique benefits of building an online presence with the WordPress software is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WordPress website’s functionality using plugins.

About Plugins

Like most people, you probably own a smart phone. What happens when you would like access to something new on your device like a new software or business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is really easy to install and integrates new features into any mobile phone.

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

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

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

Normally, if you want to expand the functionality of an already-built web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, this cost can be quite significant, especially if website developers need to add new code or modify programs or install scripts that integrate with your existing set up.

This is also applicable to starting a web site. Companies sometimes fork out money upfront for added bells and whistles they may never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest considering a modular approach to growing a website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get a web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As more features or functionality are needed, simply install new software modules with a couple of mouse clicks directly from your administration panel, to give your website or blog an entirely new range of practical functionality, and …

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

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

WP Plugins – Benefits

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

In fact, many fantastic plugins are freely available for users.

Plugins that you buy are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled many third-party web developers to enhance and contribute to the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you get started with only a simple online business presence and add new features and enhancements to your site only as required.
• Plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to your site easily and cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give you almost endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to own a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website with immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive options and may require some configuration.

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

Like WP themes, tens of thousands of plugins are available for WP users … for FREE!

You can access thousands of WP plugins from the Free WP Plugin Directory …

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that can do just about anything you could possibly need your site to do.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Media
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Securing Your WordPress Site

For example, you can add features to your website with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Portuguese)
• 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
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Migrate content from different publishing platforms
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Insert code and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add business location maps
• Publish your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically endless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by installing an inexpensive plugin on your site.

For example, if you want to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post inaccessible, or create a professional paid membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to enhance your site in lots of ways. From installing new features that can improve your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to analyze site data …

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

You can also add advanced features to your website using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate processes on your website like displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to build these functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your content with other online users on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other users through online forums or even set up a private social network on your own domain.
• Engage with your staff through live video chats
• Call your business from their mobile phones when visiting your website
• Get support via a dedicated customer help desk
• And so much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated “back end” solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors see on your web site, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical areas …

Additional Tips About Plugins

• There are many plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will begin to affect your website’s performance and page loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from possible errors.
• Install only those plugins you really need. Delete any plugins from your site, as these utilize additional resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we publish on this site for more information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it on your site. WordPress updates on a regular basis and older plugins that have not been updated can create errors.
• Ensure to always update your plugins to their latest version. Outdated plugin not only can cause conflicts, they could also contain 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 downloaded website publishing tool in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new functionality to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

If there is a functionality you need for your web site, 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 paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance such a plugin does not exist, then one can most certainly be written for you for a reasonable price.

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

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