Tag: WordPress Plugin Directory

One of the main benefits of building a website with WordPress is that you can easily enhance your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

No doubt, you probably use a smart phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your phone like a new software or a new business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is simple and easy to install and instantly integrates new functionality into a mobile phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very much like an app. You simply install and activate a software application that adds new functionality to your site …

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of your website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, the cost can be significant, especially if it involves website development.

This also applies when starting a new web site. Businesses often spend money up-front on bells and whistles they probably will never need.

For this reason, we suggest a modular approach to setting up a web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get your business web site up and running fast, then …

2) As you need new features or functionality, just add new software modules with only a few mouse clicks that integrate with your current web site, giving your website or blog a whole new and expanded range of possibilities, and …

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

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

Benefits Of Plugins

We started this blog post by comparing WP plugins with mobile apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, the same is true with plugins.

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

WordPress plugins that you buy are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of buying a Premium plugin to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite low.

Also, since WordPress makes its code publicly available, any web developer can create, modify and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many professional software development professionals to create more applications that “plug into” WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• WordPress plugins let you get started with a basic web presence and expand only as required.
• Plugins allow you to add practically endless features to your online business presence easily, quickly and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your site almost unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site instant new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and may require some initial configuring.

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

Like themes, loads of plugins are currently available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that can do almost anything you can think of.

Plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Administration
• Content Distribution
• Web Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Media
• Managing Media Files – Videos, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales & Marketing Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Site Optimization

You can add features to a website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect visitors from broken pages to other pages on your site or other sites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Import content from other CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your content
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add location maps
• Syndicate your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you virtually endless business flexibility. If you are currently planning to build a web site, or your existing site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by installing a plugin on your site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of your page inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your web presence in so many ways. From installing functionality that can enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to review site data …

To extending your site’s visibility across many social media and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your site using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate features on your website such as customer feedback and event bookings management …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying web developers to build similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your posts with other online visitors on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other members through online forums or even set up a private community on your own domain.
• Engage with your team using live video chats
• Call your business directly from their laptops while browsing your site
• Get help and support via a dedicated user support helpdesk
• And much more …

You can even integrate complex enterprise-level solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage your business sales and marketing, while the third-party application handles the technical aspects …

Additional Things You Should Know About WP Plugins

• There are loads of awesome plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can invariably affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin recommendations for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. The WordPress platform is updated often and older plugins that have not been updated can create problems.
• Ensure that you always upgrade your plugins to their most recent version. Older plugin not only can create problems, they may also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most downloaded website management software available. 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 regarding WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a plugin already exists that will do what you need it to do, and that this plugin can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost to buy it will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance this WordPress plugin is not available, then it can probably be written for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins are and how they can help enhance the functionality of your blog. See our related posts section to learn about more useful plugins that we recommend using.

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