Category: WordPress Training Manual

One of the main advantages of building a website using the WordPress content management software is that you can easily increase your WP website’s functionality using applications called plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

No doubt, you most likely own a mobile phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your device like a new software or a productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is really easy to install and integrates new features into your smart device.

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

A WordPress plugin is very much like an app. You simply install and activate a software application that provides new functionality to your website …

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

Typically, expanding the functionality of your website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancement, this cost can be significant, especially if web developers need to add new code or edit programs or install scripts that integrate with your current site.

This also applies to creating a web site. Business owners sometimes spend up front on features they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend using a modular strategy when setting up a website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As new features or functionality are needed, simply add new software modules with just a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your website or blog, to give your site a completely new range of capabilities and functionality, and …

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

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

Benefits & Advantages Of WP Plugins

Earlier, we compared plugins with smartphone apps. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some cost a little money, the same applies with WordPress plugins.

In fact, loads of plugins are available at no cost to users.

Plugins that you purchase are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of investing in professional web development services to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, anyone can create, edit and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many third-party web developers to build more new plugins that expand the WordPress application than you can imagine.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with a basic web presence and expand when necessary.
• WP plugins let you add almost endless functionality to any web presence easily and cheaply.
• WP plugins give you almost unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical users to own a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your site with new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins can be slightly more advanced and may require some initial configuration.

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

Like WordPress themes, loads of great WordPress plugins are available for WordPress users … for FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find WP plugins that can do almost anything you can possibly need a website to do.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Web Site Administration
• Content Syndication
• Driving Web Visitors
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your WP Site

You can add features to your business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect users from old pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor social signals
• 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.)
• Hide post content
• Import data from different CMS applications
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting scripts and code elements into your content
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you virtually limitless business scalability. If you are currently planning to build a website, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

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

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of a page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with customized login details for each member …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your web site in so many different ways. From adding functionality that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to review visitor data …

To increasing your site’s visibility across multiple social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate processes on your website such as user feedback and event bookings management …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to create similar functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage more with your visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other customers via online forums or even set up an online community on your site.
• Engage with your staff via live chats
• Dial your business directly from their smart phones while browsing your pages
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex enterprise solutions using a WP “front end”. This lets you manage your business marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Some Useful Tips About Plugins

• There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will start to affect your website’s resources and page loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance work for you as a result of possible errors.
• Install only those plugins you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also consume server resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we provide on this site for additional expert 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 twice before installing it on your site. WordPress changes on a frequent basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Make sure that you always maintain your plugins upgraded to their most recent software version. Older plugin not only can create errors, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

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

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you need for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already developed one that will do what you need it to do, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be surprisingly reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you would like it to do can probably be coded for you for a very reasonable price.

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

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