Tag: WordPress 101

One of the most powerful benefits of the WordPress platform is the ability to quickly increase your WP website or blog’s functionality using inexpensive (even free) applications called plugins.

Understanding WP Plugins

Like most people, you most likely use a device like a mobile phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your device like a new game or a new business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is really easy to install and integrates new features into your smart device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A WP plugin is quite similar to an app. You install a software that provides new functionality to your website or blog …

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

Typically, if you want to expand the functionality of an already-built web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, this cost can be quite significant, particularly if it involves programming code.

This is also applicable when developing a new website. Businesses will often invest money up front in features or options they may not ever need.

For this reason, we suggest a modular strategy to developing a presence online presence and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As more features are required, just install new applications with a few mouse clicks directly from within your WordPress administration panel, giving your site an entirely new and expanded range of practical features and capabilities, and …

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

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

Benefits Of WP Plugins

Earlier, we compared WordPress plugins with smartphone apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, so do WordPress plugins.

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

Plugins that you buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of a Premium WP plugin to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, anyone can create, modify and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many third-party web development companies to enhance and contribute to the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins allow you to get started simply with a basic yet professional web presence and add new features and enhancements to your site if necessary.
• WordPress plugins let you add almost unlimited functionality to any online business presence quickly, easily and cheaply.
• Plugins give you practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical users to have a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site instant new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins provide more extensive options and require some configuration.

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

Like themes, thousands of plugins are currently available to WP users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that will do just about everything you need your website to do.

There are WP plugins for:

• Site Management
• Content Management
• Increasing Site Visitors
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Managing Media Files – Videos, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Advertising Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Optimizing Your

For example, you can add features to your WordPress site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building 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 all content on your pages from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from specified pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content
• Import information from non-WP platforms
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Publicize your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you limitless business scalability. If you are currently planning to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing website was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one built on your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit by simply adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can use plugins to make a section of a post or page inaccessible, or create a complete paid membership site with personal login details for all users …

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

To increasing your site’s reach across a number of social sites and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate functionality on your website such as user testimonial and event registrations management …

And even set up a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to build the same functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team through online forums or even set up a private community on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live chats
• Dial your business directly from their mobile phones while browsing your website
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise-level solutions within a WP “front end”. This lets you control your business marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological side of things …

Useful Tips About WP Plugins

• There are lots of good plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will begin to affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of potential conflicts.
• Only keep the plugins you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WP plugins, ensure 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 the plugin reviews we provide here for additional information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it on your website or blog. WordPress is updated often and outdated WP plugins can create issues.
• Make sure to always maintain all plugins updated. Outdated plugin not only can create conflicts, they may also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing about plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already developed one that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that it can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance such a plugin does not exist, then it can certainly be coded for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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