Category: WordPress Plugins

One of the main advantages of using the WordPress platform is that you can easily expand your WP website’s functionality using applications called plugins.

About Plugins

Like most of us, you probably have a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your device like a new software or a business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into any mobile device.

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

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

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

Generally, if you need to expand the functionality of an existing web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, this cost can be significant, especially if web developers have to create new code or modify programs or install programs to integrate with your existing set up.

This also applies when setting up a new website or business blog. Many companies often pay for added features they may probably never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest using a sustainable approach to setting up your website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As you need more features or functionality, install new software modules with just a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate with your site, giving your website or blog a completely new range of practical functionality, and also …

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

Well, this is precisely what plugins let you do!

Benefits Of WordPress Plugins

I started this blog post by comparing plugins with mobile apps. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, many plugins are available at no cost to WP users.

WP plugins that you have to buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost 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 source code available to everyone, any person can create, modify and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of professional software development companies to enhance and contribute to the core software application.

• WP plugins let you get started with a simple web site and then add new features and enhancements to your site as required.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited features to any website easily, quickly and cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give you almost endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to have a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your site immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive features and may require some configuration.

Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) 100% FREE!

Like WordPress themes, tens of thousands of great plugins are made available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find WP plugins that will do almost anything you want done.

Plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your

You can add features to a website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect website pages
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content
• Migrate content from different publishing platforms
• Search and replace data
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert code and code elements into your posts and pages
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text 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 social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a web site, or your existing web site isn’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 plugins are, let me show you some practical advantages of installing an inexpensive plugin on your site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can use plugins to make a section of your page or post inaccessible, or create a professional paid membership site with separate login details for users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your site in lots of ways. From adding functionality that can improve your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to review visitor data …

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

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate functions on your pages such as displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to create the same applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will let you engage better with your web visitors, customers and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team through forums or even set up a private community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live chats
• Call your business directly from their mobile phones while browsing your site
• Get help via a customer helpdesk
• And much more …

You can also integrate complex third-party solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to control your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological areas …

Plugins – Additional Tips

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your site’s performance and page loading times. It can also create more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also use resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid WP plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we provide on this site for more 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 on your website. WordPress updates often and out-of-date WP plugins can cause issues.
• Ensure that you always update your plugins. Older plugin not only can create conflicts, they could also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most preferred content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing about WP plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web site, you can be sure that a plugin currently exists that will do exactly what you need, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be reasonably inexpensive.

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

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

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can help improve your web site. See our related posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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