Tag: WordPress 101

One of the main benefits of WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

(Just like you can find social sharing apps for smart phones …)

A plugin is really similar to an app. You download and install an application that adds new functionality to your WP site …

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WordPress users!)

Generally, if you want to add new features to an existing website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, the cost can be significant, particularly if it requires website development.

This is also applicable when starting a new website. Business owners will often fork out money for additional bells and whistles they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest using a modular strategy when developing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a basic, professional-looking web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need for new capabilities becomes evident, install new software modules with only a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your website, to give your website or blog an entirely new and expanded range of useful features, and …

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

Well, this is exactly what WP plugins allow you to do!

WP Plugins – Benefits

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, the same applies with WordPress plugins.

In fact, many plugins can be downloaded to your website at no cost.

WP plugins that you have to pay for are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of a Premium plugin to the cost of investing in professional web development services to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, modify and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of professional web development professionals to build more new tools that plug seamlessly into the WordPress software than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins let you get started with a simple yet professional site and expand as necessary.
• WordPress plugins let you add almost unlimited features to any web site easily, quickly and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your site virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow anyone to have a website that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your site instant new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins offer more advanced features and may need some initial configuring.

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

Like themes, thousands of WordPress plugins are currently available to 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 WordPress plugins that can do just about everything you need done.

Plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Distribution
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your

For example, you can enhance a WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate data from different CMS applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Insert HTML and code elements into your pages
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Distribute your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you practically endless business scalability. If you plan to build a website, or your existing website isn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

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

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can use plugins to make an area of a page or post inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your website in so many different ways. From adding new features that improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to review site data …

To extending your business reach across multiple social media and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your website using relatively inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate tasks on your pages such as customer testimonial and event bookings management …

And even run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to build these functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will enhance your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on social media.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other users via online forums or even set up an online community on your site.
• Engage with members of your team using live chats
• Dial your business directly from their cellphones when browsing your pages
• Get help via a client helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex 3rd-party solutions within a WP “front end”. This lets you control your business marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological areas …

Useful Tips About Plugins

• There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and page loading times. It also creates more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible errors.
• Install only the plugins you really need. Delete all inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium WordPress plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide on this site for more helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. The WordPress platform is updated frequently and out-of-date WordPress plugins can create issues.
• Ensure to always keep your plugins upgraded to their latest version. Older plugins not only can create problems, they may also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most preferred website open source application in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing about WP plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your website, you can be sure that a plugin currently exists that will do exactly what you want, and that this plugin can either be downloaded 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 this WordPress plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you need it to do can probably be coded for you for a reasonable price.

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

***

***