Category: WordPress Training Manual

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

What Are Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is easy to install and adds new features and functionality to any mobile device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very similar to an app. You install and activate a software that adds new functionality to your site …

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WP sites!)

Normally, expanding the functionality of your site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancement, things can become quite expensive, particularly if it requires website development.

This is also applicable when creating a new web site. Many businesses tend to invest money in advance in extra components they may never need.

For this reason, we suggest using a sustainable strategy to developing your online presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As new features are needed, add new applications with a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your web site, giving your web site a completely new range of practical capabilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent extra to install on your website?

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

Benefits & Advantages Of Using Plugins

I started this article by comparing plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, the same is true for plugins.

In fact, thousands of plugins can be downloaded to your website at no cost.

Plugins that you buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of a Premium WP plugin to the cost of paying for professional web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, any web developer can create, rewrite and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many third-party web developers to enhance the core WordPress software application.

• Plugins allow you to start off with only a basic yet professional website and expand as necessary.
• WP plugins let you add almost endless features to any website easily and very cheaply.
• Plugins give you almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a digital presence that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your site immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more advanced features and require some initial configuration.

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

Just like WP themes, tens of thousands of WordPress plugins are made available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that can do just about anything you need done.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Administration
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Managing Media – Videos, Graphics, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis
• Site Security

For example, you can expand your WordPress site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your website
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Migrate information from other CMS applications
• Perform bulk data edits
• Fight SPAM
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebars
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you virtually endless business flexibility. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

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 web site.

For example, if you want to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can use plugins to make a section of a page or post inaccessible, or create a complete paid membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your site in so many different ways. From adding features that will improve your business, your website visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To extending your site’s reach and visibility across a number of social networks and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate processes on your site like customer testimonial and event registrations management …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to create the same applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will let you engage in various ways with your visitors, customers and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your staff via forums or even set up an online social network on your domain.
• Engage with your team using live chats
• Dial your business from their smart phones when browsing your site
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

You can even integrate complex enterprise-level applications within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors will see on your site, while the third-party application handles the technical aspects …

Useful Things To Know About WordPress Plugins

• There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will eventually start to affect your site’s performance and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential conflicts.
• Install only the plugins you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WordPress plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to 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 the plugin reviews we provide here for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it on your website or blog. The WordPress platform updates frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Always upgrade your plugins to their most recent software version. Outdated plugins not only can cause errors, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature you need for your web presence, you can guarantee that a WP plugin currently exists that will do exactly what you want, and that this plugin can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin has not been created yet, then it can certainly be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can enhance the functionality of your website. See our published posts to learn about more great plugins that we recommend using.

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