Tag: Plugins

One of the most powerful features of WordPress is that you can quickly and easily increase your WordPress website’s functionality using applications called plugins.

What Are WordPress Plugins?

Like most of us, you most likely own a device like a cell phone. What happens when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new game or a tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is easy to install and immediately integrates new functionality into your mobile device.

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

A WP plugin is similar to an app. You simply download and install a little piece of software that adds new functionality to your web site …

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

Normally, expanding the functionality of an already-built site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, the cost can be significant, particularly if it requires website development.

This also applies when setting up a website. Companies often fork out money in advance on additional features or options they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a cost-effective approach to developing your presence online presence and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As more features become necessary, add new applications with a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your dashboard area, to give your website or blog an entirely new range of useful features, and also …

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

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

Benefits Of Using Plugins

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

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

WordPress plugins that you have to pay for are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any web developer can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed thousands of professional web developers to build more new tools that expand WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to get started with just a basic website and expand only if necessary.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically unlimited features to any online business presence quickly, easily and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give your online presence almost endless expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your site with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and may need some configuring.

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

Like many themes, thousands of great plugins are currently available to WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that can do almost everything you need your website to do.

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Management
• Content Syndication
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting
• Web Site Optimization

You can enhance your WordPress site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Automatic language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to Italian)
• 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 integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content
• Import information from non-WP applications
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your content
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add location maps
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you endless business scalability. If you plan to build a website, or your existing website wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your website.

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

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your business site in lots of different ways. From installing new features that enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze site metrics …

To extending your business reach and visibility across a number of social sites and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate functions on your pages like customer testimonial and event registration management …

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

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage more with your visitors, customers and registered site users …

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 displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other online visitors on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other customers using online forums or even set up an online community on your site.
• Engage with your support team using live video chats
• Call your business directly from their smart phones when visiting your website
• Get help via a dedicated customer help desk
• And so much more …

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

Useful Things You Should Know About Plugins

• There are loads of plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you as a result of possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really need to use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium WordPress plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for additional helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it. WordPress changes on a regular basis and older plugins that have not been updated can create conflicts.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Older plugin not only can cause problems, they could also have security 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 preferred CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing regarding plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you want for your website, you can be sure that a plugin currently exists that will do exactly what you want, and that this plugin can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a paid 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 one can probably be developed for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins are and how they can expand your blog. See our related posts to learn more about using WP plugins.

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