Tag: WordPress 101

One of the main advantages of choosing the WordPress software is that you can quickly and easily increase your WP site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you most likely use a cell phone. What happens when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new application, game or a new business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is really simple and easy to install and adds new features to a mobile phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A WP plugin is like an app. You install a little software application that provides new functionality to your web site …

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

Generally, adding a new feature to your site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this can become quite expensive, especially if it requires website development.

This is also applicable when setting up a web site. Many companies will often invest in added components they may never need.

For this reason, we suggest considering a modular strategy when growing a web presence and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply with minimal cost involved. Get your business web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As the need for new features arises, add new applications with only a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your current site, giving your web site an entirely new range of practical functionality, and …

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

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

WordPress Plugins – Benefits

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with smartphone apps. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, so do plugins.

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

WordPress plugins that you purchase are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of a Premium WordPress plugin to the cost of investing in professional web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled thousands of professional software development companies to enhance the core WP software application.

• WordPress plugins let you start off simply with a simple yet professional web site and expand only when necessary.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to any site quickly and really cheaply.
• Plugins give your web site almost endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to have a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins offer more extensive options and may need some configuring.

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

Like many WordPress themes, loads of plugins are made available to WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find plugins that can do almost anything you need a site to do.

There are plugins for:

• Web Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Driving Site Visitors
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Media
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Analysis Tools
• Optimizing Your

For example, you can enhance a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Automatic language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to French)
• 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
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content
• Migrate data from non-WP applications
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting code and script elements into your posts and pages
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Publicize your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you virtually limitless business scalability. If you plan to build a website, or your existing website wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

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 adding an inexpensive plugin to your website.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with separate login details for all users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your site in lots of different ways. From adding features that can enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze visitor metrics …

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

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate functionality on your website such as displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to code similar functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can increase user engagement …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other members using forums or even set up a private community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business directly from their smart phones when browsing your pages
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated enterprise-level applications within a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage your business sales and marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical functions …

Useful Things To Know About Plugins

• There are lots of good plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can start to affect your site’s resources and page loading speed. It can also create more maintenance work for you resulting from possible errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check our WordPress plugin recommendations for more useful 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. WordPress changes frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create errors.
• Ensure to always update your plugins to their most recent software version. Outdated plugin not only can cause issues, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

If there is a functionality you want for your web site, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do just what you need it to do, and that it can either be accessed for FREE, 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 WP plugin has not been created yet, then it can probably be written for you for a reasonable price.

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

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