Category: WordPress Training Manual

One of the most unique benefits of building a digital business presence with the WordPress software is that you can easily increase your WordPress website’s functionality using applications called plugins.

Understanding Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is very easy to install and integrates new features into any mobile device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Almost always, adding new features to a website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, the cost can be fairly significant, particularly if web developers have to create new code or modify programs or develop scripts that integrate into your existing set up.

This also applies when creating a new website. Companies tend to pay money upfront for extra features they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest considering a sustainable strategy to developing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a professional website up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need arises, add new software modules with only a few mouse clicks directly from your WP admin section, giving your website a completely new and expanded range of useful capabilities, and …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to add to your site?

Well, that’s precisely what WordPress plugins allow you to do!

Plugins – Benefits

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

In fact, many plugins can be installed and activated on your sites.

WP plugins that cost money are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of a Premium WordPress plugin to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite low.

Also, as WordPress makes its code available to everyone, anybody can create, modify and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has enabled many professional software developers to build more new applications that plug seamlessly into WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• WP plugins let you get started with a basic yet professional web site and then add new features and enhancements to your site only if necessary.
• Plugins let you add practically unlimited features to any site easily, quickly and really cheaply.
• WP plugins give your site almost endless expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a site that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site instant new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive options and may require some initial configuration.

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

Like many WP themes, loads of plugins are available for WP users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that will do just about anything you need your website to do.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Management
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Adding Media – Video, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Securing Your

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

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect website pages
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Import information from non-WordPress platforms
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Insert scripts and script elements into your posts
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a website, or your existing website isn’t built with WordPress, then consider using it in the future.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of installing an inexpensive plugin on your site.

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

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your website in so many ways. From installing functionality that enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze website data …

To extending your site’s reach across social media and search engines …

You can also add advanced features to your website using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can install plugins that integrate and automate processes on your pages such as user testimonial and event registrations management …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying web developers to code these applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave 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 shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team members through online forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with your staff via live video chats
• Dial your business from their cellphones when visiting your website
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated enterprise-level applications within a WP “front end”. This lets you control your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical areas …

Useful Information About WP Plugins

• There are many fantastic plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can invariably affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It can also create more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins you really need to use. Delete all deactivated plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium WP plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we provide on this site for more 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 carefully before using it. The WordPress application updates on a frequent basis and out-of-date WP plugins can create problems.
• Always update your plugins to their latest software version. Older plugin not only can cause issues, they could also have 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 it the most used content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do just what you need it to do, and that it can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be minimal.

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

And, if by chance this plugin is not available, then one can certainly be written for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins are and how they can help to improve your business blog. See our related posts section to learn about more great plugins that we recommend using.

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