Category: WordPress Plugins

One of the main benefits of WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WordPress website’s functionality using applications called plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you most likely use a mobile phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your device like a new application, software or a productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is very easy to install and integrates new functionality into any smart device.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

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

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of an already-built site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, this could get quite expensive, especially if website developers have to add new code or edit programs or develop programs that integrate with your current set up.

This is also applicable when creating a new web site. Organizations tend to invest money in advance in extra features and options they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a cost-effective strategy to developing your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As more features and functionality are needed, just install new applications with a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate with your site, giving your site a completely new range of features and functionality, and …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to install on your website?

Well, this is exactly what plugins let you do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Plugins

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

In fact, many plugins are freely available for users.

Plugins that you purchase are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of buying a Premium plugin to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, anyone can create, edit and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many professional web developers to enhance the core WP software application.

• Plugins let you start off with just a simple yet professional online business presence and then expand only when necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add almost endless functionality to any website easily, quickly and quite cheaply.
• Plugins give your web site virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a website that they can manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced options and could require some configuring.

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

Like many WordPress themes, tens of thousands of WP plugins are made available for WP users … often at no cost!

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

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

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Administration
• Content Management
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Media
• Uploading Media – Video, Graphics, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Analysis Tools
• WordPress Optimization

You can enhance a website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Portuguese)
• 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
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Migrate content from non-WP platforms
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Insert code and script elements into your posts and pages
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map of your business location
• Syndicate your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you virtually limitless business flexibility. If you are currently planning to build a website, or your existing site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you how you can benefit by simply adding an inexpensive plugin to your web site.

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

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your web presence in lots of different ways. From adding features that can enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

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

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate functions on your pages like user feedback and event registration management …

And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying software developers to design custom functionality for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networks.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other users using online forums or even set up a private online community on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live video chats
• Call your business from their laptops while visiting your site
• Open support tickets
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated enterprise solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your website, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Plugins – Some Useful Tips

• There are many WordPress plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can eventually start to affect your website’s resources and page loading times. It also means more maintenance work for you as a result of potential conflicts.
• Only keep those plugins that you really plan to use. Delete all deactivated plugins from your site, as these utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium WP plugins, make sure you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide here for additional expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it. WordPress updates often and out-of-date plugins can cause errors.
• Ensure to always keep all plugins up-to-date. Older plugin not only can cause errors and conflicts, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular online open source software in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing about WP plugins:

If there is a feature you need for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already created one that will do exactly what you need, and that it can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be fairly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin has not been created yet, then one can certainly be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins are and how they can enhance the functionality of your blog. See our published posts to learn about more popular plugins that we recommend using.

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