Tag: WordPress 101

One of the most unique benefits of using WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily increase your WordPress web site’s functionality using applications called ’plugins’.

Understanding Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is easy to install and adds new features and functionality to a mobile phone.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Typically, expanding the functionality of your website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, this cost can be significant, especially if it requires website development.

This also applies to starting a new website. Many business owners will often pay for bells and whistles they probably will never need.

For this reason, we suggest considering a modular approach when setting up your website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As the need arises, add new software modules with a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your website, giving your website or blog an entirely new range of features and functionality, and …

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

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

Benefits Of Using Plugins

I started this article by comparing plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, the same is true for WP plugins.

In fact, loads of plugins can be installed and activated on your websites.

Plugins that you purchase are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress makes its source code publicly available, anyone can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WP code. This has allowed many professional web developers to enhance the core WP software application.

• WP plugins let you get started simply with just a basic website and expand if required.
• WP plugins let you add practically endless functionality to your website easily and very inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give you almost endless expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a web presence that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and could require some configuring.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that can do just about everything you could imagine.

WP plugin categories cover:

• User Management
• Content Syndication
• Driving Site Visitors
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Adding Media – Videos, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Site SEO

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

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content
• Import data from other CMS applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Insert scripts and code elements into your posts and pages
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add a map
• Publish your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a web site, or your existing web site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider getting one built on your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

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

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can install plugins to make an area of a post inaccessible, or create a complete paid membership site with customized login details for every member …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your site in lots of ways. From adding features that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to analyze site metrics …

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

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

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to build similar applications for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other web visitors on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team members using online forums or even set up an online community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Dial your business from their cellphones while browsing your site
• Get help and support via a customer help desk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex “back end” applications with a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage your business marketing, while the third-party application handles the technical side of things …

Additional Tips About Plugins

• There are so many great WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will start to affect your website’s performance and site loading times. It can also mean more maintenance work for you as a result of possible conflicts.
• Only keep the plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid WordPress plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish on this site for more useful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it on your website or blog. The WordPress platform updates frequently and outdated WP plugins can cause issues.
• Make sure to always maintain your plugins upgraded to their latest software version. Outdated plugins not only can create errors and conflicts, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing about WP plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your web presence, you can guarantee that a plugin currently exists that will do just what you want it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be fairly inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance this plugin has not been created yet, then one can probably be written for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can help improve your WordPress web site. See our related posts section to learn about more great plugins that we recommend using.

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