Tag: Plugins

One of the most powerful advantages of choosing WordPress is that you can quickly and easily enhance your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software that is really easy to install and adds new functionality to any smart device.

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

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

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

Generally, adding new features to an existing web site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancement, this could become quite expensive, especially if website developers have to add new code or modify templates or develop scripts to integrate with your existing site.

This also applies to setting up a new website or business blog. Companies tend to pay money in advance for added components they probably will never need.

To keep your business costs to a minimum, we suggest using a cost-effective strategy to growing your presence online presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get a website up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need arises, simply add new applications with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from your administration panel, to give your website or blog a whole new range of features and functionality, and …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to install on your site?

Well, that’s precisely what a plugin allows you to do!

Benefits & Advantages Of WP Plugins

We started this article by comparing WP plugins with apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, the same is true for WP plugins.

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

Plugins that cost money are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of buying a Premium plugin to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, because WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anybody can create, edit and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many professional software development companies to create more new applications that plug seamlessly into the WordPress engine than you can imagine.

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

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

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

You can view and download thousands of plugins from the Free WordPress Plugin Directory …

As previously mentioned, you can find WordPress plugins that will do almost everything you can imagine.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Blog Administration
• Content Syndication
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Media
• Managing Media – Videos, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting Tools
• Securing Your WordPress Blog

You can expand your WP site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your website
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content sections
• Migrate data from non-WP platforms
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your posts
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add location maps
• Syndicate your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you practically limitless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website or blog, or your existing web site was not built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by simply installing a plugin on your website.

For example, if you want to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with customized login details for every user …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your web site in so many ways. From adding new features that will improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To extending your business reach across many social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate features on your website like user testimonial and event bookings management …

And even run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to code the same applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will let you engage better with web visitors, clients and registered site users …

For example, your 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 are then displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team through forums or even set up an online social network on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Call your business directly from their mobile phones when visiting your site
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

You can also integrate complex enterprise-level applications within a WP “front end”. This allows you to control your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological functions …

Plugins – Useful Information

• There are loads of plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It can also create more maintenance issues for you resulting from possible errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really plan to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WordPress plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we provide on this site for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it on your site. WordPress updates often and outdated WP plugins can create problems.
• Ensure that you always maintain your plugins up-to-date. Older plugin not only can create errors, they could also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most preferred online publishing software available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing on the subject of WordPress plugins:

If there is any functionality you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already developed one that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be fairly inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance this plugin does not exist, then one can most certainly be created for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly enhance the functionality of your WordPress site. See our published posts to learn about more great WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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