Tag: WordPress 101

One of the main benefits of WordPress is that you can quickly enhance your WordPress web site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

No doubt, you most likely own a cell phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your device like a new application, software or business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software that is easy to install and immediately integrates new features into a smart device.

(Just like you will find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very much like an app. You simply install a software that adds new functionality to your web site …

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

Typically, if you want to expand the functionality of an existing site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, this cost can be quite significant, particularly if it requires website development.

This also applies to creating a new web site. Companies will often fork out money up front on added bells and whistles they may simply not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest a modular strategy when setting up a online presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a web site up and running fast, then …

2) As you need more features, simply install new applications with a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your current website and blog, giving your website or blog an entirely new range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent more to download and install on your web site?

Well, that’s exactly what WP plugins let you do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Using Plugins

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with 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, 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 compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, edit and customize any part of the code. This has enabled many professional web developers to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins allow you to start off with just a basic yet professional site and then expand if required.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add almost unlimited features to your website easily and cheaply.
• Plugins give your web site practically endless expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow anyone to own a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive features and require some configuring.

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

Just like WP themes, loads of WordPress plugins are available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

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

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Distribution
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Securing Your

You can enhance your WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• 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.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate data from non-WP applications
• Search and replace data
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your pages
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map of your business location
• Distribute your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you endless business scalability. If you are planning to build a website or blog, or your existing website wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let’s take a look at some practical uses of adding an inexpensive plugin to your web site.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can install plugins to make a section of your page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your web site in so many different ways. From adding functionality that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to analyze visitor data …

To increasing your site’s reach across multiple social sites and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your website using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate features on your website such as displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to create similar applications for you …

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

For example, your web 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).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other online users through forums or even set up a private community on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team via live chats
• Dial your business directly from their mobile phones while visiting your site
• Get support via a user support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex third-party applications within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technical side of things …

WP Plugins – Useful Information

• There are so many WordPress plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will begin to affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It also means more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also use resources.
• Many free plugins often receive very 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 providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin recommendations for additional helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before installing it. WordPress updates on a frequent basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Make sure that you always update your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can create problems, they may also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most downloaded CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new functionality to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing regarding plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a WP plugin already exists that will do just what you need it to do, and that this plugin can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be fairly affordable.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you would like it to do can probably be written for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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