Tag: Plugins

One of the main advantages of building a website with the WordPress software is the ability to quickly and easily enhance your WordPress web site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is simple and easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into your smart device.

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

A WordPress plugin is like an app. You install and activate a software application that adds new functionality to your WP website or blog …

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

Generally, adding a new feature to your site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancement, the cost can be significant, especially if website developers need to create new code or edit programs or develop programs to integrate with your current site.

This is also applicable when creating a new web site. Many businesses sometimes invest money in features and customizations they may probably never need.

To keep your expenses low, we suggest a cost-effective approach when setting up your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As new features are needed, just add new applications with a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your web site, and give your site a whole new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

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

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

WP Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

I began this post by comparing WP plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, the same applies with plugins.

In fact, many fantastic plugins can be installed and activated on your sites.

WordPress plugins that you have to pay for are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of buying a Premium WordPress plugin to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress makes its code available to everyone, any web developer can create, edit and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many professional web development companies to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

• Plugins allow you to start simply with only a basic yet professional website and expand if required.
• WordPress plugins let you add almost endless features to your web presence quickly and inexpensively.
• Plugins give you practically endless expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow anyone to own a website that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog immediate enhancements and features.
• Some plugins can be a little more complex and may need some configuration.

WP Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Many Are) Completely FREE!

Like many themes, loads of WordPress plugins are currently available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WordPress plugins that will do almost everything you need done.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Management
• Content Management
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting
• Website Optimization

You can expand a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to German)
• 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 integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your website
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate information from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your pages
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Publish 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 hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a website, or your existing website isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by adding an inexpensive plugin to your website.

For example, if you want to publish private content, you can use plugins to make an area of your post inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for every member …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your web presence in lots of ways. From installing features that improve your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to review site metrics …

To increasing your business reach across multiple social sites and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate functionality on your pages like managing customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to design these applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can increase user engagement …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team via forums or even set up a private social network on your domain.
• Engage with your team through live webcam conferencing and chatrooms
• Call your business from their cellphones when browsing your website
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

You can even integrate complex enterprise solutions using a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your site, while the third-party application handles the technical aspects …

WordPress Plugins – Useful Things You Should Know

• There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and site loading times. It can also create more maintenance work for you as a result of potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins you really use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish on this site for additional expert information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it. WordPress updates frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create problems.
• Make sure that you always update your plugins to the latest version. Older plugin not only can cause errors and conflicts, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing about plugins:

If there is any feature you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a WP plugin currently exists that will do just what you want, and that it will either be available 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 WP plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you need it to do can certainly be coded for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what they are and how they can to improve your business blog. See our published posts to learn about more great WP plugins that we recommend using.

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