Category: WordPress Basics

One of the main features of WordPress is that you can quickly and easily increase your WordPress website’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding WP Plugins

Like most people, you most likely own a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new game or a new business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

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

A WordPress plugin is really similar to an app. You simply install and activate a software application that provides new functionality to your WP website or blog …

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

Generally, if you need to expand the functionality of an existing site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancement, the cost can be fairly significant, particularly if it requires modifying code.

This also applies when creating a new web site. Companies often pay for features they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest considering a sustainable strategy when developing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and with minimal cost involved. Get a professional website up and running fast, then …

2) As you need new features or functionality, you can add new software modules with only a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your site, giving your website or blog a completely new range of features and functionality, and …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to install on your website?

Well, that’s exactly what a WordPress plugin lets you do!

Benefits Of WP Plugins

I began this blog post by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

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

WP plugins that you purchase are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anyone can create, modify and customize any part of the code. This has allowed thousands of professional web development companies to create more applications that work seamlessly with the WordPress platform than you can imagine.

• WP plugins let you get started with just a simple web site and expand when necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically endless features to any web presence easily and very cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give your site virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow anyone to own a digital presence that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site immediate enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced options and may need some configuring.

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

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

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

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

Plugin categories cover:

• User Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Website Security

You can expand your website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (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 menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your website
• Set appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Migrate information from different CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your posts
• Add tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add a map
• Post your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you limitless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with personal login details for each member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your website in lots of ways. From adding new features that will improve your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to analyze website data …

To increasing your business reach and visibility across social networks and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated features to your site using relatively inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate functions on your website like displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And also set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to design similar applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can increase user engagement …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your content with other web visitors on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other online users using forums or even set up a private community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live web conferencing and chatrooms
• Dial your business directly from their mobile phones when visiting your pages
• Get support via a client support helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated enterprise solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage your business marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological functions …

Some Useful Tips About WordPress Plugins

• There are loads of WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this can invariably begin to affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible conflicts.
• Install only those plugins that you really need to use. Delete all unnecessary plugins from your site, as these also consume resources.
• Many free plugins often receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid WP plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for more helpful 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 website. The WordPress software updates on a frequent basis and outdated plugins can create issues.
• Ensure to always update your plugins to the most recent version. Outdated plugin not only can create conflicts, they could also have 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 content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing on the subject of plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a WordPress plugin probably exists 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 it will be fairly inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin has not been created yet, then it can probably be written for your business for a reasonable price.

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

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