Tag: Plugins

One of the most useful features of the WordPress software is that you can quickly enhance your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WordPress Plugins?

No doubt, you probably use a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your device like a new application, software or tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software that is very easy to install and immediately adds new functionality to any mobile device.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps for smart phones …)

A WordPress plugin is like an app. You simply install and activate an application that provides new functionality to your WordPress website or blog …

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

Typically, expanding the functionality of a site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this can become fairly expensive, particularly if web developers have to add new code or modify programs or develop scripts to integrate with your existing site.

This is also applicable to developing a new web site. Companies sometimes invest money up front in additional features or options they may simply not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend using a modular strategy to developing a web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As new features or functionality are needed, install new applications with only a few clicks of the mouse that integrate seamlessly with your current web site, and give your website or blog a whole new and expanded range of possibilities, and …

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

Well, that’s exactly what a WordPress plugin lets you do!

WP Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

Earlier, we compared plugins with smartphone apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some cost a little money, so do WP plugins.

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

WP plugins that you buy are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of a Premium WordPress plugin to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, any web developer can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled thousands of professional software developers to build more tools that “plug into” the WordPress software than you can probably imagine.

• WordPress plugins allow you to start off simply with just a simple website and add new features and enhancements to your site if required.
• WP plugins let you add practically endless functionality to any web presence easily and quite cheaply.
• Plugins give you almost unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a website that they can manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site instant new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and require some configuring.

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

Like many themes, loads of plugins are currently available to WP users … often at no cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that will do just about everything you need done.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Site Administration
• Content Syndication
• Increasing Site Visitors
• User Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting
• WordPress SEO

You can expand your WordPress site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect visitors from specified pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content sections
• Migrate information from different CMS platforms
• Perform bulk data edits
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebars
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you practically limitless business scalability. If you plan to build a website for your business, or your existing web site was not built using WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by adding a plugin to your web site.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can install plugins to make a section of a page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with personal login details for every user …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your business site in lots of ways. From adding functionality that will enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to review visitor data …

To extending your site’s reach and visibility across social sites and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can download plugins that integrate and automate processes on your pages such as displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And even run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to code custom functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will allow you to engage better with your visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networks.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other members via online forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
• Engage with your team via live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business directly from their laptops while browsing your pages
• Get help via a user helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex enterprise-level solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your web site, while your third-party application handles the technical aspects …

WordPress Plugins – Additional Things To Know

• There are so many WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will inevitably affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance work for you resulting from potential errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use extra server resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for additional useful 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 software is updated often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Always upgrade your plugins to the most recent version. Older plugins not only can cause problems, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making it the most downloaded CMS in the world. 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 outsourced web development.

One last thing on the subject of plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a WP plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you need it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be quite reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance this WordPress plugin does not exist, then one can most certainly be written for your business for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what they are and how they can significantly improve your business blog. See our related posts to learn more about using WordPress plugins.

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