Tag: WordPress 101

One of the most useful features of WordPress is that you can easily expand your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

About WordPress Plugins

No doubt, you probably use a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new application, software or a productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software that is very easy to install and integrates new functionality into any mobile device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

A WP plugin is like an app. You install and activate a little software application that adds new functionality to your website or blog …

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

Typically, adding a new feature to a web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, the cost can be fairly significant, especially if it involves website development.

This is also applicable to creating a website or business blog. Many business owners sometimes spend money on additional bells and whistles they may not ever need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend using a sustainable strategy to growing your online presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As you need new features, you can add new applications with a few mouse clicks that integrate with your current website or blog, giving your site a completely new range of useful features, and also …

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

Well, that’s precisely what WP plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

Earlier, we compared WP 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, thousands of wonderful plugins can be installed on your websites.

WordPress plugins that cost money are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost of investing in professional web development services to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are priced quite low.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, edit and customize any portion of the WP code. This has allowed many professional web developers to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you start off with just a simple web site and then add new features and enhancements to your site only if necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add almost unlimited features to any website quickly, easily and quite inexpensively.
• WP plugins give you virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to own a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site immediate enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced options and require some configuring.

WP Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) 100% FREE!

Like many themes, tens of thousands of WP plugins are available for WP users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that can do just about anything you need a site to do.

There are plugins for:

• Web Site Administration
• Content Management
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting Applications
• Website SEO

You can expand a business online presence with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect website pages
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Import content from non-WP platforms
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your posts and pages
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you virtually endless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog built on your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by simply adding an inexpensive plugin to your site.

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

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your web presence in lots of ways. From adding new features that will enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to review site data …

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

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate features on your pages like displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And even run a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to create the same applications 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 site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with your team members via online forums or even set up an online social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Call your business directly from their mobile phones when visiting your website
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated enterprise-level applications within a WP “front end”. This lets you manage your business marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Useful Things You Should Know About WordPress Plugins

• There are so many good plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can begin to affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Install only the plugins that you really need. Delete any plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid WP plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our WP plugin recommendations for more helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it. The WordPress core application updates often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Always upgrade your plugins to their most recent software version. Older plugins not only can cause errors, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important aspect of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing about plugins:

If there is any functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do exactly what you want, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, 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 is not available, then one can probably be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly to improve your business blog. See our related posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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