Tag: WordPress Plugin Directory

One of the main advantages of building a website using WordPress is that you can quickly expand your WP website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

About WP Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

(Just like you can find social sharing apps for smart phones …)

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

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

Typically, if you plan to expand the functionality of a site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancements, the cost can be significant, particularly if website developers need to create new code or modify templates or install programs that integrate into your current site.

This also applies to creating a new website. Businesses sometimes invest money up-front for bells and whistles they probably will never need.

To reduce your business expenses, we suggest considering a cost-effective approach to growing a website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal cost involved. Get a professional web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As more features and functionality become necessary, install new applications with a few mouse clicks directly from your WP dashboard area, and give your website a whole new range of capabilities and functionality, and …

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

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

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

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

In fact, loads of plugins can be downloaded to your website at no cost.

Plugins that cost money are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of purchasing a Premium plugin to the price of investing in web development services to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any person can create, edit and customize any part of the code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software development professionals to create more new applications that add new functionality to WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• WordPress plugins allow you to start off with a simple yet professional web site and then add new features and enhancements to your site only when necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add practically unlimited functionality to your online business presence easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your digital business presence virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website or blog new capabilities and features.
• Some plugins offer more extensive features and may need some initial configuring.

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

Like themes, thousands of great plugins are made available for WP users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WordPress plugins that can do just about everything you can imagine.

There are plugins for:

• Website Management
• Content Distribution
• Increasing Site Visitors
• User Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Analysis
• Securing Your WP Website

For example, you can enhance a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content 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.
• Offline storage integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your website
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect users from missing pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content
• Import content from different publishing platforms
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your posts and pages
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add location maps
• Publish your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you virtually endless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing website was not built using WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by simply adding an inexpensive plugin to your site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of your post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete paid membership site with personal login details for users …

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

To extending your business visibility across social sites and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate tasks on your website like managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And even run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying software developers to code similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will let you engage even more with your visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your staff through forums or even set up an online social network on your site.
• Engage with members of your team through live chats
• Call your business from their smart phones when visiting your pages
• Get help and support via a dedicated client support helpdesk
• And much more …

You can even integrate complex enterprise applications within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage your business marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical side of things …

WP Plugins – Useful Tips

• There are loads of amazing plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will inevitably begin to affect your website’s resources and page loading times. It can also create more maintenance work for you as a result of potential errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid plugins, make sure you do a little research first to understand 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 additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it on your site. WordPress updates frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Ensure to always update your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can cause issues, they could also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most downloaded CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature you need for your website, you can guarantee that a WP plugin already exists that will do what you want it to do, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin is not available, then it can most certainly be written for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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