Category: WordPress 101

One of the main benefits of WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily enhance your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WordPress Plugins?

Like most of us, you most likely have a device like a mobile phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your device like a new application, software or a new business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is simple and easy to install and immediately adds new features to your mobile phone.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A WP plugin is similar to an app. You download and install an application that provides new functionality to your WP web site …

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

Normally, if you decide to expand the functionality of your web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, things could become fairly expensive, especially if it requires website development.

This is also applicable when developing a new web site. Business owners often spend up front on features and options they may not ever need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend considering a cost-effective strategy to setting up a website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get a professional business web site up and running fast, then …

2) As the need becomes apparent, add new software modules with just a couple of mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your web site, giving your website an entirely new range of capabilities and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not a single dollar extra to add to your site?

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

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

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

In fact, thousands of plugins can be downloaded and installed on your websites.

WordPress plugins that you 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 similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any web developer can create, edit and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of professional software developers to create more plugins that integrate seamlessly with WordPress than you can imagine.

• Plugins let you start off with a basic website and add new features and enhancements to your site only if necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add practically unlimited functionality to any site easily and quite inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give you virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to own a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your site with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more advanced and may need some initial configuration.

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

Like many WP themes, thousands of WordPress plugins are available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that can do just about anything you could think of.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Site Management
• Content Management
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Inserting Media – Videos, Graphics, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Advertising Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• WP Optimization

You can expand a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect web pages
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Migrate information from other CMS applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Insert scripts and script elements into your posts and pages
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you practically limitless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website or blog, or your existing site wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of installing an inexpensive plugin on your site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make a section of a post inaccessible, or create a complete paid membership site with personal login details for all users …

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

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

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate features on your pages such as managing customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to design custom applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that will increase your site’s interactivity …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (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, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other customers via forums or even set up a private online social network on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team via live chats
• Call your business directly from their smart phones while browsing your pages
• Get help and support via a user help desk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex “back end” solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technical aspects …

Additional Tips About WP Plugins

• There are so many awesome plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible conflicts.
• Install only the plugins you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these also utilize resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WP plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check our WordPress plugin recommendations for more helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it on your website. WordPress updates frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create conflicts.
• Always update your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can create errors and conflicts, they could also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most preferred CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing about plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your website, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already developed one that will do what you want it to do, and that it can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be very affordable.

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

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

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

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