Tag: Plugins

One of the most useful features of WordPress is the ability to quickly increase your WP site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

No doubt, you probably use a cell phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your phone like a new software or a productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

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

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

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

Typically, expanding the functionality of an existing website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, this can get quite expensive, particularly if website developers need to create new code or modify programs or develop programs that integrate into your current site.

This is also applicable to creating a website. Business owners will often pay upfront for features or customizations they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest a cost-effective strategy to developing a web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get a basic, professional business website up and running fast, then …

2) As the need arises, simply add new applications with a few clicks of the mouse directly from within your WP admin section, giving your website or blog an entirely new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to add to your site?

Well, this is just what a plugin lets you do!

Benefits Of Using WP Plugins

We began this post by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some cost a little money, so do plugins.

In fact, many powerful plugins can be downloaded to your website at no cost.

Plugins that you buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of investing in web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any web developer can create, edit and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled many third-party software developers to enhance and contribute to the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins allow you to start off with a simple website and expand when required.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add almost endless functionality to your website easily, quickly and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your site almost unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more extensive features and require some initial configuring.

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

Like themes, tens of thousands of plugins are available to WP users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WordPress plugins that will do just about everything you want done.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Distribution
• Driving Web Visitors
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Uploading Media – Videocasts, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Marketing Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your WordPress Website

You can enhance a business online presence with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Automatic 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
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your site
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect web pages
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content sections
• Migrate information from different CMS applications
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting code and script elements into your content
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a website for your business, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of adding an inexpensive plugin to your website.

For example, if you want content protection, you can use plugins to make a section of your post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with customized login details for each member …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your site in lots of different ways. From adding functionality that enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze site metrics …

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

You can also add sophisticated features to your site using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate functions on your pages like displaying customer testimonials and event registration details …

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

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can enhance your site’s interactivity …

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with other users via online forums or even set up a private community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Call your business from their cellphones when browsing your pages
• Get help and support via a dedicated user support helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex 3rd-party applications within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control your business sales and marketing, while the third-party application handles the technical functions …

Plugins – Additional Tips

• There are lots of plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this can begin to affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It can also create more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really need. Delete any plugins from your site, as these utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check our WordPress plugin recommendations for additional helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it. WordPress is updated regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can create issues.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Older plugins not only can cause problems, they may also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most preferred content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing about WP plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a plugin currently exists that will do exactly what you need, and that it can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be very reasonable.

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

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

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins are and how they can help improve your WP website. See our related posts section to learn more about usingplugins.

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