Tag: WordPress 101

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

What Are Plugins?

Like most people, you probably own a device like a mobile phone. What happens when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new software or a new tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is simple and easy to install and adds new features to any smart device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

A WP plugin is quite similar to an app. You simply download and install an application that adds new functionality to your WP website or blog …

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WP!)

Normally, adding new features to an already-built website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancement, this could get fairly expensive, especially if it involves website development.

This also applies to creating a new web site. Businesses sometimes spend money upfront on added components they may simply not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest using a cost-effective strategy when developing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get your website up and running quickly, then …

2) As you need more features or functionality, install new applications with a few mouse clicks directly from within your WordPress administration area, and give your site a whole new range of practical functionality, and also …

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

Well, this is just what plugins allow you to do!

Benefits Of Using Plugins

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with apps. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, many wonderful plugins can be downloaded and installed on your sites.

Plugins that you buy are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of paying for professional web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WP code. This has allowed thousands of third-party web development companies to enhance the WPsoftware.

• Plugins let you start off with only a simple web site and then add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add practically unlimited features to any web site quickly and very inexpensively.
• WP plugins give you almost endless expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical users to own a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive features and may require some initial configuring.

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

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

You can view and download thousands of WordPress plugins from the Free WordPress Plugin Repository …

As mentioned earlier, you will find WordPress plugins that will do almost everything you could imagine.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Website Management
• Content Syndication
• Increasing Site Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Inserting Media Files – Video, Graphics & Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Advertising Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting
• Securing Your WP Site

For example, you can expand your WordPress site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content sections
• Import information from non-WP platforms
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting code and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add location maps
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site 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 about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by simply installing a plugin on your site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of a post or page inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with separate login details for each user …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your web presence in lots of ways. From adding features that improve your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze site metrics …

To increasing your site’s reach across many social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can download plugins that integrate and automate features on your pages like user feedback and event bookings management …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying web developers to design these applications for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team members using online forums or even set up a private online community on your site.
• Engage with your staff via live video chats
• Call your business from their laptops while browsing your website
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated 3rd-party solutions with a WP “front end”. This allows you to control the content that your visitors will see on your site, while the third-party application handles the technological areas …

Plugins – Additional Tips

• There are so many great WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can inevitably affect your site’s resources and site loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you resulting from possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really need to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium 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 providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for additional helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it on your site. WordPress updates regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can create problems.
• Always maintain all plugins updated. Older plugin not only can create issues, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable digital content publishing tool available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is a feature or functionality you need for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already created one that will do just what you need, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance such a WP plugin has not been created yet, then it can most certainly be created for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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