Tag: WordPress 101

One of the most unique benefits of the WordPress content management platform is the ability to easily expand your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you probably own a cell phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your device like a new application, game or a new tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is easy to install and instantly adds new features and functionality to your smart device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is similar to an app. You simply install a software application that provides new functionality to your website or blog …

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

Typically, if you decide to expand the functionality of your web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, this cost can be quite significant, especially if website developers have to add new code or edit templates or develop programs to integrate into your existing site.

This is also applicable when creating a website. Business owners tend to invest upfront for features and customizations they probably will never need.

For this reason, we recommend considering a sustainable approach to setting up a web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As the need for new capabilities or functionality arises, add new software modules with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from your admin section, giving your site a completely new range of practical capabilities, and …

3) Cost not a single cent extra to install on your site?

Well, that’s exactly what a WordPress plugin enables you to do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Using Plugins

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

In fact, loads of plugins are freely available for users.

Plugins that you purchase are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of buying a Premium WP plugin to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any person can create, modify and customize any portion of the WP code. This has allowed thousands of third-party web developers to build more new tools that enhance WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to get started simply with only a basic web site and add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add almost unlimited features to any web site quickly, easily and cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give your site almost endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone 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 provide your website or blog with new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins provide more advanced options and require some configuring.

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

Like many WordPress themes, loads of plugins are currently available for WP users … often at no cost!

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

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

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting
• Website Optimization

For example, you can add features to a WP site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your site
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages 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.)
• Hide page content sections
• Migrate information from non-WordPress platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Insert code and code elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a website, or your existing website was not built with WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

In case 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 an inexpensive plugin on your site.

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

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

To increasing your site’s visibility across social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate processes on your pages such as managing customer testimonials and event registration details …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying software developers to build custom applications for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn 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 added exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team through forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with members of your team via live chats
• Call your business from their mobile phones while visiting your site
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex 3rd-party solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to control the content that your visitors see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technical areas …

Plugins – Some Useful Things You Should Know

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you resulting from potential errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid WordPress plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish on this site for additional 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 carefully before using it. The WordPress software is updated often and older plugins can cause issues.
• Always update your plugins to the latest software version. Older plugins not only can cause issues, they may also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

If there is a feature you need for your website, you can be sure that a WP plugin already exists that will do exactly what you want, and that it can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin has not been created yet, then it can most certainly be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can help expand your blog. See our related posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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