Tag: WordPress 101

One of the main advantages of choosing WordPress is the ability to quickly increase your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding WP Plugins

No doubt, you most likely have a device like a cell phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your phone like a new game or a new business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is really easy to install and instantly integrates new functionality into any smart phone.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is similar to an app. You download and install a little piece of software that adds new functionality to your WordPress website …

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of a site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, things could become quite expensive, particularly if web developers need to add new code or modify code or install programs to integrate into your existing site.

This also applies to setting up a website. Businesses sometimes invest money on bells and whistles they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a modular approach to setting up your online presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply with minimal cost involved. Get a professional web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As you need more features and functionality, install new applications with a few clicks of the mouse that integrate seamlessly with your existing web site, to give your site an entirely new and expanded range of useful functionality, and …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to download and install on your web site?

Well, that’s exactly what WP plugins allow you to do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

Earlier, we compared plugins with mobile apps. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, the same applies with WordPress plugins.

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

Plugins that cost money are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of buying a Premium plugin to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anyone can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has enabled thousands of third-party web development professionals to enhance and contribute to the core WP software application.

• Plugins let you start off with just a simple yet professional online business presence and add new features and enhancements to your site only if necessary.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited features to any site easily, quickly and really inexpensively.
• WP plugins give your web site virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow non-technical users to have a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog immediate capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and may need some initial configuration.

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

Just like WP themes, loads of great WP plugins are available to WP users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find plugins that will do almost anything you need your site to do.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Driving Site Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Uploading Media Files – Videocasts, Graphics, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your WordPress Blog

You can add features to a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect affiliate links
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• 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.)
• Protect post content
• Migrate information from different publishing applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and code elements into your website’s header and footer
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add a map of your business location
• Publish your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you virtually limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog, or your existing site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let me show you how you can benefit by installing a plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your site in lots of ways. From adding new features that can improve your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze visitor data …

To increasing your business visibility across social sites and search engines …

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

And even set up a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to design these applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can enhance visitor engagement …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your posts with other online users on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your support team through forums or even set up a private community on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Dial your business from their mobile phones when visiting your website
• Get help and support via a user support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex third-party solutions using a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors see on your site, while the third-party application handles the technical aspects …

Plugins – Additional Things To Know

• There are so many great WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will inevitably affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible errors.
• Only keep the plugins you really plan to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive very little to no support from the plugin author. 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 offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our WP plugin reviews for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it on your website. The WordPress platform is updated on a frequent basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Make sure that you always keep all plugins up-to-date. Older plugin not only can cause conflicts, they may also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable online open source tool available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web site, you can be sure that a plugin already exists that will do just what you need it to do, and that it can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be minimal.

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

And, if by chance this WP plugin is not available, then it can certainly be written for your business for a very reasonable price.

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

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