Tag: Plugins

One of the main features of WordPress is that you can easily increase your WP site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is very simple and easy to install and instantly adds new functionality to a smart phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

A plugin is really similar to an app. You install and activate a little piece of software that provides new functionality to your WordPress website …

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

Typically, if you decide to add a new feature to an existing website, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancements, things can become fairly expensive, particularly if it requires website development.

This also applies to developing a website or business blog. Organizations sometimes pay for extra bells and whistles they probably will never need.

To reduce expenses, we recommend a cost-effective strategy when growing a web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need new features, just install new applications with a few clicks of the mouse directly from your admin area, to give your web site an entirely new range of practical capabilities, and …

3) Cost not one cent extra to add to your website?

Well, this is exactly what WP plugins let you do!

Benefits & Advantages Of Using Plugins

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

In fact, loads of plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

WordPress plugins that you buy are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost of paying for web development services to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software developers to enhance the core WordPress software application.

• Plugins allow you to get started with just a basic yet professional online business presence and expand only if necessary.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited functionality to your online business presence quickly and really cheaply.
• Plugins give your website virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” 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 website or blog new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more advanced and may require some initial configuring.

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

Just like WordPress themes, thousands of WordPress plugins are available to WP users … for FREE!

You can view and download thousands of plugins from the Free WP Plugin Repository …

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that can do almost anything you need done.

There are plugins for:

• Web Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Uploading Media Files – Videocasts, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Analysis Applications
• Optimizing Your WordPress Site

You can add features to a WP site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Norwegian)
• 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 management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect visitors from certain pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Import information from non-WP applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your posts and pages
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add business location maps
• Distribute your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you limitless business flexibility. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let’s take a look at some practical uses of installing a 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 an area of your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with personal login details for users …

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

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

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate tasks on your pages like customer testimonial and event bookings management …

And also set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to code custom applications for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other online users via online forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with your team via live chats
• Dial your business from their laptops when browsing your pages
• Get help via a client helpdesk
• And much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise-level solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technical side of things …

Additional Information About WP Plugins

• There are many WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will start to affect your site’s resources and site loading speed. It also creates more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also consume server resources.
• Many free plugins often receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid plugins, make sure you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it. The WordPress core application is updated often and older plugins that have not been updated can create problems.
• Make sure that you always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can create conflicts, they may also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant features to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

If there is any functionality you need for your web site, you can be sure that a WordPress plugin already exists that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that it can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance such a plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does just what you need it to do can probably be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can help enhance the functionality of your website. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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