Tag: WordPress Plugin Directory

One of the main benefits of building a website using WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WordPress web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a software that is simple and easy to install and instantly adds new functionality to any mobile device.

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

A plugin is similar to an app. You install an application that provides new functionality to your WP website …

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

Typically, if you decide to expand the functionality of an already-built website, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, things could become fairly expensive, particularly if it requires programming code.

This is also applicable to developing a website or business blog. Business owners sometimes invest in added features they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a cost-effective approach when setting up your website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a website up and running fast, then …

2) As new features are needed, you can add new applications with a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your website, and give your site an entirely new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

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

Well, that’s exactly what WP plugins let you do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Plugins

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

In fact, thousands of plugins are freely available for users.

Plugins that you purchase are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of buying a Premium plugin to the price of paying for web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, edit and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many professional software development companies to create more new tools that add new functionality to the WordPress platform than you can probably imagine.

• WordPress plugins allow you to start off with only a basic website and then expand as required.
• Plugins allow you to add practically unlimited features to any online business presence quickly and really cheaply.
• Plugins give your web site practically unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow business owners to own 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 website instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and may require some configuration.

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

Like many themes, tens of thousands of great WP plugins are currently available for WP users … for FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that will do almost anything you could imagine.

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Administration
• Content Syndication
• Increasing Site Visitors
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Adding Media – Videos, Graphics & Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting
• WP Security

For example, you can add features to a business online presence with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect users from broken pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content
• Import data from non-WP applications
• Perform bulk content edits
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your site’s header or footer
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Distribute your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you virtually endless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing site was not built using WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you how you can benefit by adding an inexpensive plugin to your site.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with separate login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your site in so many different ways. From adding features that enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze site data …

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

You can also add complex functionality to your site using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate tasks on your website such as user testimonial and event bookings management …

And even run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to code these applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your content with other online visitors on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team members through online forums or even set up a private community on your domain.
• Engage with your team via live chats
• Call your business from their mobile phones while visiting your pages
• Get support via a dedicated user helpdesk
• And much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated 3rd-party applications within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors will see on your web site, while your third-party application handles the technical side of things …

WordPress Plugins – Useful Tips

• There are many great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance work for you as a consequence of potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use additional resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid 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 publish on this site for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it. WordPress changes frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Make sure to always maintain all plugins up-to-date. Older plugins not only can create errors, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing about plugins:

If there is a functionality you want for your web site, you can be sure that a WP plugin already exists that will do just what you want it to do, and that it can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be fairly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does just what you would like it to do can probably be created for you for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WP plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly to improve your WP site. See our published posts to learn about more useful plugins that we recommend using.

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