Category: WordPress Plugins

One of the most unique benefits of choosing the WordPress software is the ability to easily increase your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is easy to install and immediately integrates new functionality into your smart phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

A plugin is very much like an app. You download and install an application that adds new functionality to your site …

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

Normally, if you plan to add a new feature to a web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancement, things could get fairly expensive, particularly if web developers need to add new code or edit code or develop programs that integrate with your current set up.

This also applies when developing a new website or business blog. Organizations will often invest in extra components they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend a cost-effective strategy to setting up your presence online presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need more features or functionality, install new applications with a few mouse clicks directly from within your admin section, giving your website or blog a whole new and expanded range of useful capabilities, and …

3) Cost not a single cent more to add to your web site?

Well, this is exactly what a plugin enables you to do!

Plugins – Benefits

Earlier, we compared WordPress plugins with mobile apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, the same is true of WordPress plugins.

In fact, thousands of great plugins can be downloaded and installed on your sites.

Plugins that cost money are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of paying for web development services to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, modify and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software developers to enhance and contribute to the WordPresssoftware.

• WP plugins let you get started with a basic yet professional website and then add new features and enhancements to your site if required.
• Plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to any web presence quickly and inexpensively.
• WP plugins give your digital business presence practically endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow anyone to own a web presence that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website or blog with new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and require some configuring.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that can do just about anything you can possibly want a site to do.

There are plugins for:

• Web Site Administration
• Content Management
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Adding Media Files – Video, Graphics, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales And Advertising Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Analysis Tools
• Optimizing Your WP Website

For example, you can expand your business online presence with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages 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 integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect affiliate links
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content
• Migrate content from non-WordPress applications
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and code elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add location maps
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a website, or your existing web site wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog built on your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical uses of installing an inexpensive plugin on your website.

For example, if you need content protection, you can use plugins to make an area of a post inaccessible, or create a complete paid membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your business site in so many ways. From installing functionality that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to analyze site metrics …

To increasing your site’s reach across social sites and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your site using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that automate features on your site such as user testimonial and event registration management …

And also run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build similar functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP 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 turn into online discussions) using either the native WP 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 online visitors on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team members via forums or even set up an online community on your site.
• Engage with your support team via live video chats
• Call your business directly from their devices while visiting your site
• Get help via a dedicated client support helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can even integrate complex enterprise applications within a WP “front end”. This lets you control your business sales and marketing, while the third-party application handles the technical functions …

Some Useful Tips About WP Plugins

• There are lots of useful plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this can begin to affect your website’s performance and page loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium plugins, make sure you check around a little and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our WP plugin recommendations for additional expert information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it on your website. WordPress updates often and older WordPress plugins can cause errors.
• Ensure to always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can cause errors and conflicts, they may also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant functionality to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a WordPress plugin currently exists that will do what you need, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost to buy it will be very reasonable.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin is not available, 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 to improve your web site. See our related posts to learn about more useful WP plugins that we recommend using.

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