Category: WordPress Basics

One of the main features of WordPress is the ability to easily expand your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

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

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very similar to an app. You install and activate an application that adds new functionality to your website or blog …

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

Typically, if you want to add new features to your site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancements, things could become fairly expensive, especially if it involves editing code.

This is also applicable when setting up a web site. Companies tend to invest money in advance in components they may simply not need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend a cost-effective approach when developing a website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need more features, install new applications with only a few clicks of the mouse directly from your dashboard area, to give your site a completely new range of possibilities, and …

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

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

Benefits Of Plugins

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 money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, loads of plugins can be downloaded and installed on your sites.

WP plugins that you buy are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any web developer can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed many third-party web development companies to create more new plugins that work with WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• Plugins allow you to start simply with a basic yet professional site and add new features and enhancements to your site only when necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited functionality to any web site easily and cheaply.
• Plugins give your digital presence practically endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow non-technical users to own a website that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be slightly more complex and may need some initial configuration.

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

Just like themes, loads of great WordPress plugins are available for WP users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find WP plugins that can do almost everything you need done.

There are WP plugins for:

• Website Administration
• Content Syndication
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Adding Media Files – Videos, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Advertising Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Optimizing Your WP Web Site

You can enhance a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter 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 (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Import data from different CMS applications
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Insert code and script elements into your posts
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you practically endless business flexibility. If you are currently planning to build a web site for your business, or your existing web site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your web site in lots of ways. From adding new features that can improve your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To extending your site’s reach across a number of social media and search engines …

You can also add advanced features to your site using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate tasks on your pages like displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to create custom applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with other users using forums or even set up a private online social network on your site.
• Engage with your support team via live video chats
• Call your business directly from their laptops when browsing your website
• Get help and support via a user helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise-level solutions with a WP “front end”. This enables you to manage your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological areas …

WP Plugins – Some Useful Things You Should Know

• There are so many amazing plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will inevitably begin to affect your site’s resources and site loading times. It also means more maintenance work for you as a consequence of potential conflicts.
• Install only those plugins you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also consume resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid WP plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for additional useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it on your website or blog. The WordPress core software updates on a frequent basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Ensure to always maintain your plugins updated to their latest software version. Older plugin not only can cause errors, they may also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most downloaded CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you need for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do just what you need, and that this plugin can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be reasonable.

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you need it to do can probably be coded for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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