Category: WordPress Plugins

One of the main advantages of building a website using WordPress is the ability to easily enhance your WordPress site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

Understanding Plugins

No doubt, you probably have a device like a smart phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your device like a new application, game or a new productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is very easy to install and integrates new features into your smart phone.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is similar to an app. You install a software that provides new functionality to your site …

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WordPress!)

Generally, if you want to expand the functionality of a web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, this can become quite expensive, especially if web developers need to create new code or modify templates or develop scripts that integrate into your current site.

This is also applicable to setting up a web site. Many business owners tend to spend money in advance on added features they probably will never need.

To keep your costs down, we suggest using a cost-effective approach to setting up your website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need arises, add new applications with a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your WordPress dashboard area, giving your website or blog an entirely new range of possibilities, and also …

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

Well, this is just what plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some may cost a little money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, loads of plugins are freely available for users.

Plugins that you have to pay for are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of purchasing a Premium plugin to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anybody can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled many third-party web developers to build more applications that “plug into” WordPress than you can imagine.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with a simple web site and then expand if necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add almost endless features to your website easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your online presence practically endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your site new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more complex and require some configuring.

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

Just like themes, loads of plugins are available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WP plugins that can do almost anything you could possibly want your web site to do.

Plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Administration
• Content Management
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Uploading Media Files – Video, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Optimizing Your

For example, you can expand a website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect web pages
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content
• Import information from non-WP applications
• Search and replace data
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Insert code and code elements into your content
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Syndicate your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you practically limitless business flexibility. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing web site was not built using WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of adding an inexpensive plugin to your site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make an area of your page inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with customized login details for every user …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your website in so many different ways. From adding features that can improve your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to review visitor data …

To extending your business reach across multiple social media and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your pages such as customer feedback and event registration management …

And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to build custom applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that will increase visitor engagement …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networks.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other online users via online forums or even set up a private online community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live chats
• Dial your business directly from their cellphones when visiting your website
• Open support tickets
• And much more …

You can even integrate complex enterprise-level applications within a WP “front end”. This allows you to control the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technical side of things …

Plugins – Additional Tips

• There are lots of plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will start to affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins you really need to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also consume resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish here for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before installing it on your site. The WordPress platform is updated regularly and outdated plugins can cause issues.
• Always keep all plugins upgraded to their most recent version. Outdated plugin not only can create errors, they may also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing about plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do just what you want it to do, and that it can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price to buy it will be very reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then one can probably be written 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 website. See our published posts to learn about more popular WP plugins that we recommend using.

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