Tag: WordPress 101

One of the most unique benefits of choosing the WordPress website publishing platform is the ability to easily expand your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most people, you probably have a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you want to access something new on your device like a new game or a productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is easy to install and integrates new features into a mobile phone.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

A WP plugin is very much like an app. You simply install and activate an application that provides new functionality to your website …

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

Almost always, adding new features to an already-built web site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancements, this cost can be significant, especially if website developers have to add new code or edit programs or develop programs that integrate with your existing site.

This also applies to creating a new website or business blog. Businesses will often spend money for added bells and whistles they probably will never need.

To keep expenses to a minimum, we suggest using a modular strategy when developing your digital presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As the need arises, add new software modules with only a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate seamlessly with your existing web site, giving your website or blog a completely new and expanded range of practical capabilities, and …

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

Well, this is exactly what WordPress plugins let you do!

Benefits Of WordPress Plugins

I began this article by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, the same is true with WordPress plugins.

In fact, loads of plugins are available at no cost to WordPress users.

Plugins that you purchase are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress makes its code publicly available, anybody can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed many professional software developers to build more new tools that plug seamlessly into the WordPress platform than you can possibly imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to get started simply with a basic web presence and add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited functionality to your web site easily and quite cheaply.
• WP plugins give your website practically unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a digital presence that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your site immediate capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and could require some configuring.

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

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

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

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

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Management
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Adding Media – Videocasts, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Advertising Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting
• Securing Your WP Blog

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

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Hide pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Migrate data from non-WordPress platforms
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Insert code and code elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add location maps
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you virtually endless business scalability. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing web site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

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

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can use plugins to make an area of a post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional membership site with separate login details for users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your web site in lots of different ways. From installing features that can enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To increasing your business visibility across many social media and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your site using relatively inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate functions on your site such as user feedback and event registrations management …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to design similar applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that will make your site even more interactive …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your posts with other web visitors on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other users through online forums or even set up an online community on your domain.
• Engage with your support team using live chats
• Call your business directly from their cellphones while visiting your pages
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated “back end” applications with a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage your business sales and marketing, while your third-party application handles the technological aspects …

Some Useful Things You Should Know About WP Plugins

• There are so many great WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your site’s performance and page loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Install only those plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium plugins, make sure you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations 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 installing it. WordPress is updated frequently and outdated WP plugins can cause errors.
• Ensure that you always maintain your plugins up-to-date. Older plugins not only can cause problems, they could also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing on the subject of WordPress plugins:

If there is a functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you need, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you want it to do can most certainly be created for you for a very reasonable price.

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

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