Tag: WordPress 101

One of the most useful advantages of choosing the WordPress platform is that you can quickly and easily expand your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

Like most people, you most likely own a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you want to access something new on your device like a new application, game or a productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is really simple and easy to install and instantly integrates new features and functionality into a mobile phone.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A WP plugin is very much like an app. You simply install a software application that adds new functionality to your WP site …

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

Normally, if you need to add new features to a web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, this can get quite expensive, especially if it involves programming code.

This is also applicable when starting a website or business blog. Organizations will often pay up-front for extra bells and whistles they may simply not need.

To keep your costs low, we recommend a cost-effective approach when growing a web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As the need for new capabilities arises, just add new applications with a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate with your current site, giving your website or blog a whole new range of possibilities, and …

3) Cost not one dollar more to download and install on your website?

Well, that’s just what a WordPress plugin enables you to do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, the same applies with plugins.

In fact, loads of wonderful plugins are freely available for users.

Plugins that you have to pay for are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are typically quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress makes its code available to everyone, any person can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled thousands of third-party software development companies to build more new plugins that add new functionality to the WordPress software than you can imagine.

• Plugins allow you to start simply with only a basic online business presence and add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited features to any site quickly and cheaply.
• Plugins give your web site almost endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to own a digital presence that they can manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website or blog with new capabilities and features.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and may need some configuring.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that will do almost anything you need done.

There are plugins for:

• Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Adding Media – Videocasts, Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting
• Securing Your

For example, you can add features to your business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Display ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (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
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up 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 showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content
• Import data from other CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Insert HTML and code elements into your blog’s header or footer
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Syndicate your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing web site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider using it in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical uses of installing an inexpensive plugin on your site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of a post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with customized login details for every user …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your website in so many different ways. From adding features that 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 a number of social networks and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can install plugins that integrate and automate features on your website like displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build the same functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will increase your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web 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 are then displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Share your content with other online visitors on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other users via online forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team using live chats
• Dial your business directly from their mobile phones when browsing your site
• Get help and support via a user support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex enterprise-level solutions with a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors see on your website, while your third-party application handles the technical side of things …

Plugins – Additional Things To Know

• There are many WordPress plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can eventually begin to affect your site’s performance and page loading times. It also means more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also use resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid WordPress plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our WordPress plugin reviews 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 installing it. The WordPress application is updated often and older plugins can create issues.
• Always keep your plugins updated. Outdated plugins not only can cause problems, they could also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most used content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you want for your web site, you can be sure that a WordPress plugin probably exists that will do just what you want it to do, and that it can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance this WP plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you would like it to do can probably be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can significantly improve your blog. See our published posts to learn more about using WP plugins.

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