Tag: Plugins

One of the main benefits of the WordPress software is the ability to quickly increase your WP website’s functionality using applications called plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

No doubt, you most likely have a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your device like a new software or a new productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is easy to install and integrates new features into a smart phone.

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

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

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

Almost always, adding a new feature to your web site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancement, things can become fairly expensive, especially if it involves website development.

This also applies when starting a new website or business blog. Organizations sometimes invest money in components they may simply not need.

To save money and keep expenses to a minimum, we suggest considering a cost-effective approach to setting up a website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get your business web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As new features are needed, add new software modules with a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your WordPress admin section, to give your site a completely new range of useful functionality, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent more to add to your web site?

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

Benefits And Advantages Of Plugins

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

In fact, many great plugins can be downloaded and installed on your sites.

WP plugins that you buy are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared 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 are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anybody can create, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software developers to enhance the core WordPress software application.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with a simple yet professional website and then add new features and enhancements to your site only if required.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically unlimited features to your website easily and very inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give you practically endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your site with immediate capabilities and features.
• Some plugins can be a little more complex and could require some configuring.

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

Like themes, loads of WP plugins are available for WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that will do almost everything you could think of.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Administration
• Content Management
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your WP Site

For example, you can enhance a website with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect users from missing pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Import information from non-WordPress applications
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Insert code and script elements into your content
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you practically limitless business scalability. If you are planning to build a web site for your business, or your existing website wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical uses of adding an inexpensive plugin to your website.

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

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your web site in so many different ways. From installing functionality that can improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to review visitor metrics …

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

You can also add complex functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your website such as user feedback and event registrations management …

And also run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to build custom functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can let you engage more with web visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other members via forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with members of your team via live chats
• Call your business directly from their smart phones when browsing your site
• Get support via a client helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated 3rd-party solutions within a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage your business marketing, while the third-party application handles the technical side of things …

Plugins – Some Useful Tips

• There are loads of plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this will affect your site’s performance and site loading speed. It can also create more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also utilize resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide here for more information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it on your site. WordPress changes on a regular basis and older plugins can create conflicts.
• Always update your plugins. Older plugin not only can cause problems, they could also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new features to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing regarding plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already created one that will do what you need it to do, and that this plugin can either be downloaded 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 any chance this plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you would like it to do can certainly be written for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can help expand your business blog. See our published posts to learn more about using WP plugins.

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