Category: WordPress Plugins

One of the main features of the WordPress platform is that you can quickly enhance your WP website or blog’s functionality using applications called ’plugins’.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you probably use a mobile phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new software or a new business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is simple and easy to install and integrates new features into a smart phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Normally, if you want to expand the functionality of an already-built web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this cost can be quite significant, particularly if website developers need to create new code or edit templates or install scripts to integrate with your current site.

This also applies when starting a website or business blog. Organizations tend to invest money in features they probably will never need.

For this reason, we suggest a cost-effective strategy when developing a website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As you need more features, add new software modules with only a couple of mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your existing website or blog, giving your website or blog a completely new range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent more to download and install on your site?

Well, that’s just what a WordPress plugin allows you to do!

Plugins – Benefits

Earlier, we compared plugins with apps. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some cost a little money, the same is true for plugins.

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

Plugins that you buy are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the cost of investing in professional web development services to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any web developer 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 allow you to start off with just a simple site and add new features and enhancements to your site if necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to your online business presence quickly and cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give you virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with immediate capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins offer more extensive options and require some initial configuring.

WordPress Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) Completely FREE!

Just like themes, thousands of WP plugins are available for WP users … often at no cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that can do almost everything you can possibly need a web site to do.

Plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting
• Optimizing Your WordPress Site

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

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in 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 website from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Migrate data from non-WordPress applications
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting code and script elements into your website’s header and footer
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you practically endless business scalability. If you are planning to build a website, or your existing web site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

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

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with separate login details for users …

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

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

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate tasks on your website like customer feedback and event registrations management …

And also set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to design these applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can increase visitor engagement …

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 then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other members through online forums or even set up an online community on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live video chats
• Dial your business directly from their mobile phones while visiting your pages
• Get help via a customer help desk
• And so much more …

You can even integrate complex enterprise solutions with a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors will see on your web site, while your third-party application handles the technical areas …

Useful Tips About Plugins

• There are loads of great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It also means 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 utilize extra server resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid plugins, ensure that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin recommendations for additional helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it. WordPress changes frequently and older WordPress plugins can cause conflicts.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Older plugin not only can create problems, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most preferred digital content publishing platform in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new features to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing about plugins:

If there is a functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a WP plugin probably exists that will do just what you need it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be minimal.

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin is not available, then one can most certainly be developed for your business for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can help expand your web site. See our related posts section to learn about more popular plugins that we recommend using.

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