Tag: WordPress 101

One of the main advantages of building a website using the WordPress software is the ability to quickly increase your WordPress website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

No doubt, you probably have a device like a smart phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your phone like a new game or a business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is really easy to install and immediately integrates new features into any mobile device.

(Just like you can find social sharing apps …)

A WP plugin is very similar to an app. You simply download and install a little software application that adds new functionality to your WordPress website …

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

Normally, expanding the functionality of a web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this cost can be quite significant, especially if it involves modifying code.

This is also applicable when setting up a website or business blog. Businesses sometimes spend upfront on components they probably will never need.

For this reason, we suggest a sustainable strategy when setting up a website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need more features and functionality, simply install new applications with only a few mouse clicks directly from within your administration panel, giving your website an entirely new range of useful functionality, and …

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

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

Benefits Of Plugins

Earlier, we compared plugins with apps. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, so do plugins.

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

Plugins that you purchase are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anybody can create, edit and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of professional software developers to enhance and contribute to the core WP software application.

• WP plugins allow you to start off simply with a simple web presence and add new features and enhancements to your site only when required.
• WordPress plugins let you add almost endless features to your web site easily and really inexpensively.
• WP plugins give your online business presence virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a web presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive features and may need some configuration.

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

Just like themes, thousands of great WP plugins are available for WordPress users … for FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WordPress plugins that can do just about everything you can imagine.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Website Administration
• Content Distribution
• Increasing Site Visitors
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Media
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis
• Optimizing Your

You can add features to your website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Automatic language translation (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 menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Migrate information from non-WP applications
• Perform bulk content edits
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Insert code and script elements into your pages
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add location maps
• Publicize your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you virtually endless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website, or your existing site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by simply installing a plugin on your site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your page inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your web site in so many ways. From installing new features that will improve your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze visitor data …

To increasing your business reach and visibility across social sites and search engines …

You can also add advanced features to your site using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate functions on your site like displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying web developers to code these functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can let you engage better with your web visitors, clients and registered site users …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team via forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
• Engage with your support team through live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business from their cellphones when visiting your site
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated third-party solutions with a WP “front end”. This enables you to manage your business marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Plugins – Additional Things You Should Know

• There are lots of WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will eventually affect your site’s performance and site loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you resulting from possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use extra resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, we recommend that you check around a little 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 our plugin reviews for more information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it on your website. WordPress changes frequently and out-of-date plugins can create issues.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Older plugins not only can cause conflicts, they could also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular website open source platform available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

If there is a feature or functionality you need for your website, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do what you need it to do, and that this plugin can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance such a plugin does not exist, then it can probably be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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