Tag: Plugins

One of the main features of the WordPress website publishing platform is that you can easily increase your WP website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WordPress Plugins?

Like most of us, you probably use a mobile phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your device like a new application, software or a new tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is really easy to install and immediately integrates new functionality into a mobile phone.

(Just like you can find social sharing apps for mobile phones …)

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

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

Normally, adding new features to an already-built website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancements, things can become quite expensive, especially if website developers have to create new code or edit code or install programs to integrate with your current set up.

This also applies when creating a website. Businesses sometimes invest upfront for bells and whistles they may not need.

To reduce your business costs, we suggest considering a cost-effective strategy when setting up a website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As more features and functionality become necessary, you can install new software modules with a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your WordPress admin area, and give your site a whole new range of practical capabilities, and also …

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

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

Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

Earlier, we compared WordPress plugins with mobile apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, many powerful plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

WordPress plugins that you purchase are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of investing in web development services to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anybody can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled many third-party web development professionals to enhance the core WordPress software application.

• Plugins allow you to start off with just a basic site and then expand only if necessary.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to your online business presence easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your site practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to have a site that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website with immediate enhancements and features.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and may need some configuring.

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

Like themes, tens of thousands of WordPress plugins are made available to WP users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find WordPress plugins that can do almost everything you want done.

There are WP plugins for:

• Blog Administration
• Content Syndication
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Uploading Media – Videos, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting Applications
• Web Site SEO

You can enhance a website with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Import content from other CMS platforms
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Insert scripts and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebars
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add business location maps
• Post your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you virtually limitless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website, or your existing site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog in the future, 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’s take a look at how you can benefit by simply adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post inaccessible, or create a full membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your web presence in lots of different ways. From adding new features that enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to review site metrics …

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

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate features on your site such as customer feedback and event registration management …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to design the same functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can increase your site’s interactivity …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn 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 increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other online users on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other users via online forums or even set up a private online community on your own site.
• Engage with your staff using live video chats
• Dial your business directly from their devices when visiting your pages
• Get support via a dedicated client helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex 3rd-party solutions using a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage your business marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological side of things …

Plugins – Useful Tips

• There are lots of plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins you really need to use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these also consume server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid WordPress plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our WP plugin reviews for more helpful 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 using it on your website. The WordPress core application changes frequently and older plugins can cause errors.
• Always update your plugins to the latest software version. Older plugins not only can create issues, they may also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most used CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing on the subject of WP plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a WordPress plugin currently exists that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly affordable.

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then it can probably be developed 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 expand your website. See our related posts section to learn more about using WordPress plugins.

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