Tag: WordPress 101

One of the main features of WordPress is that you can quickly and easily enhance your WordPress website’s functionality using applications called ’plugins’.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you most likely use a smart phone. What do you do when you want to access something new on your device like a new software or a new business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

(Just as you will find social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A WordPress plugin is like an app. You install and activate a little piece of software that adds new functionality to your site …

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

Almost always, adding a new feature to a site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, things can become fairly expensive, particularly if it involves website development.

This is also applicable to starting a new website. Organizations tend to pay money in advance for features and options they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest a sustainable approach when growing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a professional business website up and running quickly, then …

2) As new features are required, add new applications with a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your current web site, to give your website or blog a completely new and expanded range of features and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent extra to add to your web site?

Well, this is precisely what a plugin enables you to do!

Plugins – Benefits

We started this post by comparing plugins with ’apps’. Just like some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, the same is true of WP plugins.

In fact, loads of useful plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

Plugins that you have to pay for are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of paying for web development services to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, because WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anyone can create, edit and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has enabled thousands of third-party software development professionals to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

• Plugins let you get started with a simple site and then expand only when necessary.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited functionality to your online business presence quickly, easily and cheaply.
• Plugins give your digital business presence virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to own a site that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive features and may require some initial configuration.

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

Just like WordPress themes, thousands of plugins are available for WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that can do almost everything you need your web site to do.

There are plugins for:

• Site Administration
• Content Management
• Driving Site Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Media
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your WordPress Website

For example, you can expand a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Import content from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk content edits
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting code and code elements into your pages
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add location maps
• Publish your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a website, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by simply installing a plugin on your website.

For example, if you want to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can install plugins to make a section of your page inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your web presence in so many ways. From installing features that can improve your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze site metrics …

To increasing your site’s visibility across a number of social networks and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your website using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate functionality on your site like user testimonial and event registration management …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to create the same functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will increase visitor engagement …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team members via online forums or even set up a private online community on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team through live video chats
• Call your business from their mobile phones while browsing your site
• Get help and support via a client help desk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated enterprise applications with a WP “front end”. This enables you to manage your business sales and marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological functions …

WP Plugins – Some Useful Things You Should Know

• There are lots of great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can begin to affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Only keep those plugins you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize extra server resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium plugins, ensure that you check around a little and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we provide here for more expert 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 or blog. WordPress is updated often and older plugins that have not been updated can create issues.
• Always keep all plugins updated. Outdated plugins not only can create problems, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable web open source software available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

If there is any feature you need for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly 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 surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you would like it to do can certainly be created for you for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly expand your blog. See our published posts to learn about more popular WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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