Tag: WordPress 101

One of the most powerful benefits of using the WordPress website publishing software is the ability to quickly expand your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is very easy to install and instantly adds new functionality to a mobile device.

(Just like you will find social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is like an app. You install and activate a software that provides new functionality to your WordPress web site …

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

Typically, if you want to add new features to a web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancements, the cost can be fairly significant, especially if it requires modifying code.

This is also applicable when starting a website. Business owners tend to invest money in extra features and options they may not ever need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend a sustainable strategy when developing your 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 presence up and running fast, then …

2) As you need new features, you can add new software modules with a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your existing web site, to give your website an entirely new range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to add to your website?

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

WordPress Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

I started this post by comparing WordPress plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, so do WordPress plugins.

In fact, loads of plugins can be installed on your sites.

WordPress plugins that you have to buy are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anybody can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed many third-party web development companies to create more applications that enhance the WordPress application than you can imagine.

• WP plugins let you start off simply with a simple website and then add new features and enhancements to your site only when required.
• Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited features to any web presence quickly, easily and really inexpensively.
• Plugins give your web site virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your site immediate capabilities and features.
• Some plugins offer more advanced options and may need some configuring.

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

Like many themes, tens of thousands of great plugins are available for WP users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that will do just about anything you can think of.

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Management
• Content Management
• Driving Site Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Applications
• Website Optimization

You can expand a business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site 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.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content sections
• Migrate data from different publishing platforms
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Insert HTML and code elements into your posts and pages
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add location maps
• Distribute your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing website wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

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

For example, if you need content protection, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with separate login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your website in lots of ways. From adding features that can enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To increasing your business reach and visibility across various social media and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate functionality on your website like customer feedback and event registrations management …

And even run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build custom applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can enhance your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team through forums or even set up an online social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live video chats
• Dial your business directly from their smart phones while visiting your site
• Get help and support via a user support helpdesk
• And much more …

You can also integrate complex enterprise applications with a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage your business marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological aspects …

Plugins – Additional Information

• There are lots of plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will affect your website’s resources and page loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you resulting from possible conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WordPress plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check our WordPress plugin recommendations for more helpful 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. The WordPress platform changes often and older plugins that have not been updated can create conflicts.
• Make sure that you always update your plugins to the latest software version. Outdated plugin not only can create issues, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most used CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing about plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your website, you can guarantee that a WordPress plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you need, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost to buy it will be reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance this WP plugin has not been created yet, then one can probably be coded for you for a very reasonable price.

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

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