Tag: WordPress 101

One of the main benefits of building a website using the WordPress content management platform is that you can quickly and easily enhance your WP site’s functionality using plugins.

About Plugins

Like most people, you most likely have a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your phone like a new game or tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software that is easy to install and instantly adds new functionality to any mobile device.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is similar to an app. You download and install a little software application that adds new functionality to your web site …

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

Typically, if you plan to add new features to an already-built web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, this cost can be quite significant, especially if it involves website development.

This also applies to starting a new website or business blog. Businesses sometimes fork out money in advance on extra features and options they may never need.

To save money and keep costs down, we recommend a sustainable strategy to growing your website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get a basic, professional website up and running fast, then …

2) As you need new features or functionality, add new applications with only a couple of mouse clicks directly from your administration area, giving your website an entirely new range of practical functionality, and …

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

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

Benefits Of Using WordPress Plugins

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, the same applies to plugins.

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

WP plugins that you purchase are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of a Premium WordPress plugin to the price of investing in professional web development services to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any web developer can create, modify and customize any part of the WP code. This has allowed many third-party web development companies to build more applications that work seamlessly with WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins let you get started with just a basic site and then expand if required.
• Plugins let you add practically endless features to your online business presence quickly and very cheaply.
• WP plugins give you practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to own a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins can be slightly more complex and may need some initial configuration.

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

Just like themes, loads of great plugins are made available for WP users … for FREE!

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

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

WP plugin categories cover:

• Website Administration
• Content Management
• Web Traffic Generation
• User Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Uploading Media – Video, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Increasing Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your WordPress Site

You can add features to a WordPress site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Automatic 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
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your site
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from specific pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content
• Migrate data from non-WP platforms
• Search and replace data
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Insert code and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebars
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add a map of your business location
• Distribute your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

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

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your website in so many different ways. From adding new features that will improve your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To extending your business visibility across social networks and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate tasks on your pages such as customer testimonial and event registration management …

And even run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying web developers to code these functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will make your site even more interactive …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (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, giving your site added exposure).
• Share your content with other web visitors on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other online users through online forums or even set up an online social network on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live webcam conferencing and chatrooms
• Dial your business directly from their devices when browsing your website
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

You can even integrate complex “back end” applications within a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors see on your website, while your third-party application handles the technical side of things …

Useful Information About WP Plugins

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can invariably affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible errors.
• Only keep the plugins you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize extra server resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium WP plugins, ensure that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for additional useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it on your website or blog. WordPress changes often and older plugins can cause errors.
• Always upgrade your plugins to their most recent software version. Older plugin not only can cause errors, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing about plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web site, you can be sure that a WP plugin already exists that will do what you need it to do, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, 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 chance such a plugin does not exist, then one can most certainly be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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