Tag: WordPress 101

One of the most powerful benefits of WordPress is that you can quickly and easily expand your WordPress site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you probably have a mobile phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your device like a new software or a business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software that is simple and easy to install and immediately adds new features to your smart device.

(Just like you will find social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

A WordPress plugin is like an app. You simply install a little piece of software that adds new functionality to your website or blog …

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

Almost always, if you decide to expand the functionality of a web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, the cost can be significant, especially if it involves website development.

This is also applicable to starting a new website or business blog. Business owners will often fork out money on components they may simply not need.

For this reason, we suggest considering a sustainable strategy when growing a web presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get your business web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As new features are required, install new software modules with a few mouse clicks directly from your WP dashboard panel, giving your website a completely new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

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

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

Benefits And Advantages Of WordPress Plugins

Earlier, we compared 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 wonderful plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

WordPress plugins that cost money are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the cost of paying for professional web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, modify and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has allowed many professional web developers to enhance the core software application.

• WordPress plugins allow you to start simply with a basic online business presence and then expand only when required.
• Plugins allow you to add practically unlimited features to your web site quickly and very cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give your digital presence virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to own a digital presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your site with immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more extensive options and may require some initial configuration.

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

Like WordPress themes, loads of great plugins are available for WP users … for FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find plugins that will do almost everything you want done.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• User Management
• Content Management
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Blog SEO

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

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (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
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Import data from non-WordPress platforms
• Perform bulk data edits
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your blog’s header and footer
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

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

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let me show you some practical uses of adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can use plugins to make a section of your post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional membership site with personal login details for each member …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your site in lots of ways. From adding new features that can enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To extending your site’s reach across social networks and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate tasks on your pages such as managing customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to create these applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can increase visitor engagement …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your posts with other web visitors on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your staff using forums or even set up a private social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live video chats
• Call your business directly from their mobile phones when browsing your website
• Get help via a user support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated enterprise-level applications using a WP “front end”. This enables you to control your business sales and marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Additional Things To Know About WP Plugins

• There are so many plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your website’s performance and page loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these utilize extra resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium WordPress plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide here for additional expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it. WordPress updates frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Always update your plugins to the most recent version. Older plugin not only can create issues, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

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

One last thing on the subject of plugins:

If there is a feature you want for your website, you can be sure that a WP plugin already exists that will do just what you need it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin does not exist, then one can probably be developed for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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