Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the most unique advantages of building a digital presence with WordPress is that you can quickly expand your WP site’s functionality using inexpensive (even free) software called ’plugins’.

Understanding Plugins

Like most people, you probably have a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your device like a new application, software or a business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is really simple and easy to install and adds new features to any mobile phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Almost always, expanding the functionality of an existing website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancements, this could become quite expensive, particularly if it requires programming code.

This is also applicable when starting a new website or business blog. Business owners tend to spend money for added components they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a sustainable strategy to developing your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal cost involved. Get your business website up and running quickly, then …

2) As you need new features and functionality, you can add new applications with only a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate with your existing website and blog, to give your website a whole new and expanded range of capabilities and functionality, and …

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

Well, this is exactly what a WP plugin lets you do!

Benefits Of WP Plugins

We began this article by comparing WP plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some cost a little money, the same applies to WP plugins.

In fact, loads of wonderful plugins can be downloaded to your site at no cost.

Plugins that you buy are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed thousands of professional web developers to create more tools that enhance WordPress than you can imagine.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with only a basic yet professional online business presence and expand as required.
• Plugins let you add almost endless features to any web presence quickly, easily and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give your digital presence practically unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to have a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website with new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more extensive options and require some initial configuration.

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

Like themes, tens of thousands of great WordPress plugins are 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 previously mentioned, you can find plugins that can do just about everything you want done.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• User Management
• Content Distribution
• Driving Site Visitors
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Site SEO

You can enhance a WP site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect web links
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content sections
• Import data from other CMS applications
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert code and code elements into your website’s header and footer
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add 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, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you virtually endless business scalability. If you are planning to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing web site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog built on your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let me show you some practical uses of installing a plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make an area of a post or page inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for each user …

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

To increasing your site’s reach across many social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated features to your site using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate processes on your website such as customer testimonial and event registrations management …

And also set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to design the same functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage in various ways with visitors, customers and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other web visitors on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team members using forums or even set up a private online social network on your domain.
• Engage with your support team using live chats
• Call your business from their devices while visiting your website
• Get help via a dedicated client support helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated “back end” applications with a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors see on your web site, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Useful Tips About WP Plugins

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can inevitably affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of potential conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use additional server resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium plugins, make sure you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check our WP plugin recommendations for additional information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before installing it on your website or blog. The WordPress application updates regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can create conflicts.
• Always keep your plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugins not only can cause errors, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular web management tool available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is a feature you need for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do just what you need, and that it can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin has not been created yet, then it can certainly be created for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can help to improve your business blog. See our related posts section to learn more about using WP plugins.

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