Tag: Plugins

One of the main advantages of building an online presence with WordPress is the ability to quickly expand your WP website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

Like most people, you most likely own a device like a smart phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new application, software or a new business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software that is very easy to install and adds new features and functionality to your mobile phone.

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

A WP plugin is similar to an app. You install an application that adds new functionality to your web site …

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of an already-built website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, this can become quite expensive, especially if web developers need to add new code or modify templates or develop programs that integrate into your existing set up.

This also applies when setting up a new website. Organizations sometimes fork out money on additional features and customizations they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend considering a cost-effective strategy to developing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a professional-looking web site up and running fast, then …

2) As you need more features or functionality, just add new applications with a few clicks of the mouse directly from your WordPress admin area, to give your website or blog a whole new and expanded range of possibilities, and …

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

Well, that’s exactly what WP plugins let you do!

Benefits Of Plugins

I started this blog post by comparing plugins with apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some may cost a little money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, many useful plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

Plugins that you purchase are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of paying for professional web development services to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anyone can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WP code. This has allowed many third-party software development companies to enhance the core software application.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with just a basic online business presence and then add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• WP plugins let you add almost endless functionality to any web presence quickly and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give you practically endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to have a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your site new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more advanced features and require some initial configuration.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WP plugins that can do just about anything you could think of.

There are plugins for:

• Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Managing Media Files – Videos, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Advertising Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Optimizing Your

For example, you can enhance a WordPress site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content sections
• Import information from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk content edits
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Insert scripts and code elements into your website’s header and footer
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Syndicate your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a website or blog, or your existing website wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let me show you some practical uses of installing a plugin on your site.

For example, if you want to publish private content, you can install plugins to make an area of your page or post inaccessible, or create a complete paid membership site with personal login details for every user …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your site in so many different ways. From installing features that enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze website data …

To increasing your site’s reach and visibility across social networks and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate functions on your site like displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to code similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will increase your site’s interactivity …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with your team members via forums or even set up a private community on your domain.
• Engage with your team using live webcam conferencing and chatrooms
• Call your business directly from their mobile phones when browsing your site
• Get help via a user support helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can also integrate complex enterprise solutions within a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors will see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technical functions …

Some Useful Tips About Plugins

• There are many plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can invariably affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you as a result of possible errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the 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 more information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before installing it. The WordPress application is updated frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create problems.
• Always upgrade your plugins to the latest software version. Outdated plugins not only can cause issues, they may also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most preferred content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you need for your website, you can guarantee that a WP plugin already exists that will do exactly what you need, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price to purchase it will be quite affordable.

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

And, if by any chance this WordPress plugin does not exist, then it can probably be coded for your business for a very reasonable price.

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

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