Tag: WordPress Plugin Directory

One of the most useful advantages of using WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily enhance your WordPress site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

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

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is very much like an app. You download and install a software that provides new functionality to your WordPress site …

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

Typically, expanding the functionality of a web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, this can become quite expensive, especially if website developers have to add new code or modify templates or develop scripts that integrate into your current set up.

This also applies to setting up a new web site. Business owners tend to invest money up-front in features and customizations they probably will never need.

To save money and keep your costs low, we recommend considering a cost-effective strategy to developing a website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get your web site up and running fast, then …

2) As you need more features, simply install new applications with only a few clicks of the mouse directly from within your WP administration area, to give your website an entirely new range of useful features, and also …

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

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

WP Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

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

In fact, many powerful plugins are freely available for WP users.

Plugins that you purchase are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite low.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any person can create, edit and customize any part of the code. This has enabled many third-party web developers to enhance and contribute to the core software application.

• WordPress plugins allow you to start off with only a simple website and expand only if necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited functionality to any web site easily, quickly and really inexpensively.
• Plugins give your website virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow anyone to have a website that they can manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced features and require some initial configuring.

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

Just like WordPress themes, loads of great plugins are made available to WordPress users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WP plugins that will do almost everything you could possibly need a web site to do.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• User Administration
• Content Management
• Web Traffic Generation
• User Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Optimizing Your

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

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect users from specific pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Migrate information from non-WordPress applications
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your posts and pages
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add location maps
• Publish your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

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

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you some practical uses of installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can install plugins to make a section of your post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with separate login details for users …

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

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

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

And also run a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to build similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can let you engage better with your visitors, clients and registered site users …

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other members using online forums or even set up a private community on your own site.
• Engage with your staff through live webcam conferencing and chatrooms
• Dial your business from their devices when visiting your site
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated enterprise solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control your business sales and marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological areas …

Additional Things To Know About WordPress Plugins

• There are many WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can eventually start to affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WordPress plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide on this site for additional expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it. WordPress changes regularly and out-of-date WP plugins can create issues.
• Always update your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can create conflicts, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important aspect of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable content management system 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 regarding plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already created one that will do what you want it to do, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be reasonably inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance such a WP plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you would like it to do can probably be written for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can expand your website. See our related posts section to learn about more great plugins that we recommend using.

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