Tag: WordPress 101

One of the most useful advantages of using WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WP website or blog’s functionality using inexpensive (and often free) software called plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

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

(Just as there are social sharing apps for smart phones …)

A plugin is like an app. You install and activate an application that provides new functionality to your website or blog …

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

Normally, expanding the functionality of an existing website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, this cost can be significant, especially if website developers need to create new code or modify code or develop scripts to integrate into your current set up.

This is also applicable when creating a new web site. Organizations will often invest in features they may probably never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest considering a modular strategy to developing a digital presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As you need new features, you can install new software modules with only a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from within your dashboard section, giving your web site a whole new and expanded range of features and functionality, and …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to install on your web site?

Well, that’s just what a plugin lets you do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Using WP Plugins

I started this post by comparing plugins with mobile apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, loads of plugins are freely available for WP users.

Plugins that you buy are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of paying for professional web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, any web developer can create, modify and customize any part of the code. This has enabled thousands of professional web developers to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• WordPress plugins allow you to start simply with just a basic yet professional web presence and then add new features and enhancements to your site as required.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to any site easily and cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give you almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow anyone 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 web site with new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins are slightly more advanced and could require some configuring.

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

Like WordPress themes, tens of thousands of WP plugins are available for WP users … for FREE!

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

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

Plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Driving Site Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Adding Media – Video, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Marketing Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your WordPress Site

For example, you can expand a WP site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site 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.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect users from broken pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• 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. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content sections
• Migrate information from non-WP applications
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting code and code elements into your posts and pages
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add location maps
• Publicize your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you virtually endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website for your business, or your existing website wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

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

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can use plugins to make a section of a page inaccessible, or create a professional paid membership site with personal login details for every user …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your web presence in lots of ways. From installing new features that enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to review site data …

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

You can also add complex features to your website using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate functionality on your site like customer testimonial and event registration management …

And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to code the same applications for you …

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

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Share your content with other online visitors on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team via forums or even set up a private community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live video chats
• Call your business from their cellphones while visiting your site
• Get help via a dedicated user helpdesk
• And much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated 3rd-party solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technical side of things …

WordPress Plugins – Useful Things To Know

• There are many plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your site’s resources and page loading speed. It also creates more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible conflicts.
• Only keep the plugins you really need. Delete any plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid WordPress plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for more expert information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before installing it. WordPress changes regularly and older plugins can cause issues.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can cause errors and conflicts, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most preferred web publishing platform available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing about WP plugins:

If there is any functionality you want for your web site, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you need, and that this plugin can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost to purchase it will be minimal.

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

And, if by chance this plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you would like it to do can certainly be developed for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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