Category: WordPress Basics

One of the most useful advantages of choosing the WordPress platform is that you can easily enhance your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you probably own a device like a cell phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new application, game or a business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is very simple and easy to install and instantly integrates new features into any smart phone.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

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

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

Normally, if you want to expand the functionality of your web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancements, this can become fairly expensive, particularly if web developers have to create new code or modify templates or develop scripts to integrate into your existing site.

This also applies to setting up a website. Organizations sometimes spend up front on features they may probably never need.

To reduce business expenses, we suggest considering a cost-effective strategy when developing your online presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need more features, install new applications with just a few mouse clicks directly from your admin panel, giving your website or blog an entirely new range of useful functionality, and …

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

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

Benefits Of WordPress Plugins

I started this blog post by comparing WordPress plugins with smartphone apps. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, the same is true with plugins.

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

Plugins that you have to buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of a Premium plugin to the price of investing in web development services to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, anyone can create, modify and customize any part of the code. This has allowed thousands of third-party web developers to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

• Plugins allow you to get started with a simple online business presence and expand only when required.
• Plugins allow you to add practically unlimited features to your web presence quickly and very inexpensively.
• Plugins give your site virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to own a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced options and could require some configuration.

Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Many Are) Completely FREE!

Like themes, thousands of great plugins are available for WP users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that can do almost everything you could think of.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• User Management
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Inserting Media – Video, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Advertising Automation
• Increasing Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting Applications
• WP Security

You can expand your website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Automatic language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content sections
• Migrate content from other publishing platforms
• Perform bulk content edits
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Inserting code and code elements into your content
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you virtually endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website for your business, or your existing site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

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

For example, if you want to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can use plugins to make a section of a post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional membership site with personal login details for all users …

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

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

You can also add advanced features to your site using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate features on your site such as managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And also run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying web developers to build these applications for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other members through online forums or even set up a private social network on your site.
• Engage with members of your team through live webcam conferencing and chatrooms
• Dial your business from their devices while browsing your site
• Get help and support via a dedicated user support helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex enterprise solutions within a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your web site, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical side of things …

Additional Things To Know About Plugins

• There are lots of great WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance issues for you resulting from possible errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use extra server resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid WP plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it. The WordPress software changes regularly and outdated plugins can create problems.
• Ensure to always keep all plugins upgraded to their latest version. Outdated plugin not only can cause problems, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important aspect 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 web developers.

One last thing on the topic of WordPress plugins:

If there is any feature you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a plugin already exists that will do exactly what you need, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be minimal.

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

And, if by chance this WP plugin has not been created yet, then one can probably be coded for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can significantly expand your blog. See our published posts to learn more about using WP plugins.

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