Category: WordPress Basics

One of the most unique features of the WordPress software is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WordPress web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WordPress Plugins?

No doubt, you most likely own a cell phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your device like a new application, software or business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is very simple and easy to install and adds new functionality to any mobile phone.

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

A plugin is similar to an app. You simply install and activate a little piece of software that adds new functionality to your website …

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

Almost always, if you plan to add new features to a site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancements, this cost can be significant, especially if it requires website development.

This is also applicable to starting a website or business blog. Businesses sometimes invest money in advance in added features or customizations they may not need.

For this reason, we recommend a sustainable strategy when growing a online presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As you need more features or functionality, install new software modules with only a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your WP administration panel, giving your website a completely new range of practical capabilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single dollar extra to download and install on your web site?

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

Benefits And Advantages Of Plugins

I began this blog post by comparing plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, so do WordPress plugins.

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

Plugins that you have to pay for are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress makes its code available to everyone, any person can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WP code. This has allowed many third-party web developers to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

• Plugins let you start off with a basic yet professional site and then expand only when required.
• Plugins allow you to add almost endless functionality to any site quickly, easily and really cheaply.
• Plugins give you almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to own a digital presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive features and may require some initial configuration.

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

Like many themes, loads of WordPress plugins are made available to WP users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WP plugins that can do just about anything you need done.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• User Management
• Content Management
• Increasing Site Visitors
• User Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Uploading Media – Videocasts, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your

You can expand a WP site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Display ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect users from certain pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content
• Migrate information from other publishing applications
• Perform bulk content edits
• Fight SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting code and code elements into your posts
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map of your business location
• Distribute your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you practically limitless business flexibility. If you are currently planning to build a web site for your business, or your existing web site isn’t 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 me show you how you can benefit by simply installing a plugin on your site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can use plugins to make an area of your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with customized login details for each user …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your web site in so many different ways. From adding new features that will enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to review website metrics …

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

You can also add complex features to your website using relatively inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate features on your website like customer feedback and event registration management …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying software developers to build custom applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can enhance visitor engagement …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team via forums or even set up a private online community on your own site.
• Engage with your support staff using live chats
• Dial your business from their smart phones while visiting your website
• Get help and support via a customer helpdesk
• And so much more …

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

Additional Things To Know About Plugins

• There are loads of amazing plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your website’s resources and page loading speed. It can also create more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins you really use. Delete all deactivated plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium WP plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for additional expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it. WordPress changes often and out-of-date plugins can create problems.
• Make sure to always maintain your plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugin not only can cause problems, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

If there is any feature you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already created one that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that it 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 WordPress plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you want it to do can certainly be written for your business for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can enhance the functionality of your web site. See our related posts section to learn about more popular plugins that we recommend using.

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