Tag: WordPress Plugin Directory

One of the most useful advantages of choosing WordPress is that you can easily expand your WP web site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is easy to install and immediately integrates new features and functionality into your mobile device.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps …)

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

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

Normally, if you plan to expand the functionality of your web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, things can become quite expensive, especially if website developers have to create new code or edit templates or install programs to integrate with your existing site.

This is also applicable when developing a website. Companies tend to invest money in features and options they may simply not need.

For this reason, we suggest using a modular strategy to developing your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get your web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need for new features or functionality arises, install new applications with just a couple of mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your existing website and blog, to give your site a whole new range of features and functionality, and …

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

Well, this is exactly what a WP plugin enables you to do!

Benefits Of Using WP Plugins

I began this post by comparing WordPress plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, so do WordPress plugins.

In fact, thousands of plugins can be downloaded and installed on your sites.

WP plugins that you buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of investing in professional web development services to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, modify and customize any part of the code. This has allowed thousands of third-party web developers to enhance and contribute to the core WP software application.

• Plugins allow you to start off with just a basic web site and add new features and enhancements to your site only if required.
• WordPress plugins let you add almost endless features to your website easily and cheaply.
• Plugins give you virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to own a web presence that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and require some initial configuring.

Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Many Of Them Are) 100% FREE!

Just like themes, thousands of great WordPress plugins are currently available for WP users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find plugins that will do almost everything you could think of.

There are plugins for:

• Website Administration
• Content Management
• Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Inserting Media – Videocasts, Graphics & Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• WP SEO

For example, you can add features to a WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation (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 menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from broken pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Import information from other publishing platforms
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert code and script elements into your content
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Syndicate your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you are planning to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing site was not built using WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you some practical advantages of adding an inexpensive plugin to your website.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can use plugins to make an area of your post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your web site in lots of different ways. From adding features that will enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to review site metrics …

To extending your business reach across social networks and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that automate functionality on your pages such as managing customer testimonials and event registration details …

And also run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to design similar applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can enhance your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (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, giving your site increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your support staff using forums or even set up a private community on your own domain.
• Engage with your support team through live video chats
• Dial your business directly from their mobile phones when visiting your site
• Open support tickets
• And much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated third-party solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to control your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical areas …

Some Useful Information About Plugins

• There are many great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will start to affect your site’s resources and page loading times. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible errors.
• Install only the plugins you really need. Delete all inactive plugins from your site, as these also consume resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium WordPress plugins, make sure you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for more helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before installing it on your website. The WordPress software is updated frequently and out-of-date plugins can cause errors.
• Ensure to always maintain your plugins updated. Outdated plugins not only can create problems, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

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

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a plugin probably exists that will do just what you want, and that this plugin can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be reasonably affordable.

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

And, if by any chance such a plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you would like it to do can probably be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can expand your web site. See our related posts section to learn about more great plugins that we recommend using.

***

***