Tag: WordPress 101

One of the most unique advantages of choosing the WordPress website management platform is that you can easily increase your WordPress web site’s functionality using plugins.

About WordPress Plugins

No doubt, you probably use a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your device 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 integrates new features and functionality into any smart phone.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very much like an app. You install an application that adds new functionality to your website or blog …

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

Almost always, expanding the functionality of an existing website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancements, this cost can be fairly significant, particularly if web developers have to add new code or edit programs or install programs that integrate into your existing site.

This also applies to setting up a new web site. Businesses will often fork out money in advance on features or options they may not ever need.

For this reason, we suggest considering a sustainable approach to growing your presence online presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As you need more features or functionality, install new software modules with only a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from your admin panel, giving your site a whole new range of useful capabilities, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar more to add to your website?

Well, this is precisely what a plugin enables you to do!

Plugins – Benefits

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

In fact, thousands of powerful plugins can be installed on your websites.

Plugins that you have to buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of paying for web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any web developer can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled thousands of professional software development professionals to enhance and contribute to the core WP software application.

• Plugins allow you to start off with only a basic web site and then expand only as required.
• WordPress plugins let you add almost endless functionality to any web site easily and cheaply.
• Plugins give your web site practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your site immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive options and require some initial configuring.

Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Many Of Them Are) 100% FREE!

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

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WP plugins that will do almost everything you need done.

There are WP plugins for:

• Blog Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Website Optimization

For example, you can enhance a WordPress site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content
• Import data from different publishing applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebars
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add location maps
• Publish your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you endless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website for your business, or your existing site was not built using WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

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

For example, if you need content protection, you can use plugins to make an area of a page or post inaccessible, or create a full membership site with separate login details for users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your web presence in lots of different ways. From adding new features that enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To increasing your site’s reach across multiple social sites and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated features to your website using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate functions on your website such as user testimonial and event registrations management …

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

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will allow you to engage even more with your visitors, customers and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• 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 the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social media.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other members using online forums or even set up a private online community on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live video chats
• Call your business directly from their cellphones when visiting your website
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated “back end” solutions using a WP “front end”. This lets you manage your business marketing, while your third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Some Useful Things To Know About Plugins

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will invariably affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential errors.
• Only keep the plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these utilize extra server resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium WP plugins, ensure that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check our WordPress plugin reviews for more useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it on your website or blog. The WordPress software is updated on a regular basis and outdated WordPress plugins can cause issues.
• Always keep your plugins updated. Older plugins not only can cause problems, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP 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 expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing about WP plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your web site, you can be sure that a WordPress plugin probably exists that will do just what you need, and that this plugin can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance this plugin has not been created yet, then it can most certainly be written for you 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 WordPress web site. See our related posts section to learn about more useful plugins that we recommend using.

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