Category: WordPress Training Manual

One of the most useful features of the WordPress platform is that you can quickly and easily enhance your WordPress site’s functionality using inexpensive (even completely free) applications called plugins.

What Are WordPress Plugins?

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software that is easy to install and integrates new features into your mobile phone.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

A WP plugin is like an app. You simply install a software that provides new functionality to your WordPress web site …

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

Typically, adding new features to your site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things could become fairly expensive, especially if web developers have to add new code or edit templates or develop scripts to integrate into your current set up.

This also applies to creating a new website or business blog. Companies will often invest in components they may simply not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest considering a modular 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 web site up and running fast, then …

2) As the need for new features and functionality arises, add new software modules with only a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate seamlessly with your existing site, giving your website a completely new range of useful functionality, and …

3) Cost not one dollar more to install on your web site?

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

Benefits Of Using WordPress Plugins

I began this post by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

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

WordPress plugins that you purchase are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost of investing in professional web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are typically quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any person can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled many professional software developers to enhance the WPsoftware.

• WP plugins allow you to get started with only a basic site and expand if required.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically endless functionality to any site quickly and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your digital business presence almost unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to have a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be slightly more complex and require some configuring.

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

Like WordPress themes, thousands of great plugins are available to WP users … for FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WordPress plugins that can do just about anything you can possibly need a website to do.

There are plugins for:

• Blog Management
• Content Distribution
• Driving Site Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Media Management Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting
• Securing Your WP Website

For example, you can add features to a website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Import information from non-WP applications
• Search and replace data
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add a map
• Publish your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically limitless business scalability. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider using it in the future.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let’s take a look at some practical uses of adding an inexpensive plugin to your site.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to enhance your web site in lots of ways. From installing features that enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To increasing your business reach across social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate functions on your pages such as customer feedback and event registrations management …

And even run a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to code the same functionality for you …

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

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Share your content with other online users on social media.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team using forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
• Engage with your team using live video chats
• Call your business from their cellphones when browsing your site
• Open support tickets
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex 3rd-party applications with a WP “front end”. This lets you manage your business sales and marketing, while your third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Plugins – Useful Tips

• There are loads of WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will eventually affect your site’s performance and site loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins you really need. Delete any plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide on this site for more useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it on your website or blog. The WordPress software changes frequently and outdated WordPress plugins can cause issues.
• Always upgrade your plugins to their latest version. Older plugin not only can create errors and conflicts, they could also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already created 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 premium plugin, that the cost to buy it will be very affordable.

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

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

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

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