Tag: WordPress Plugin Directory

One of the most powerful advantages of choosing the WordPress software is the ability to quickly expand your WP website or blog’s functionality using inexpensive (and often completely free) software called plugins.

About WP Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is easy to install and instantly integrates new features and functionality into any mobile phone.

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

A WordPress plugin is really similar to an app. You simply download and install a software that adds new functionality to your site …

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

Typically, if you decide to add new features to an existing site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things could get fairly expensive, particularly if website developers have to create new code or edit code or install scripts to integrate into your existing set up.

This also applies when creating a new web site. Companies tend to spend up-front on added features they may never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest using a cost-effective approach when setting up your web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As the need for new features or functionality becomes apparent, you can install new applications with just a couple of mouse clicks directly from your admin panel, giving your website a whole new and expanded range of practical features and capabilities, and …

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

Well, that’s just what a WP plugin enables you to do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

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

In fact, thousands of wonderful plugins are available at no cost to users.

Plugins that cost money are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, because WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any web developer can create, edit and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has enabled many professional web development professionals to build more applications that “plug into” the WordPress software than you can possibly imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to get started simply with only a simple yet professional website and then expand when required.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically endless features to any site easily and very cheaply.
• Plugins give you practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical users to own a digital presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website immediate enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and could require some configuration.

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

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

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

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

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Web Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Media
• Inserting Media Files – Videocasts, Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales & Marketing Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Securing Your WP Website

For example, you can enhance your WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect affiliate links
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Import content from non-WP applications
• Search and replace data
• Fight SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your blog’s header and footer
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing site wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

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 web site.

For example, if you want to publish private content, you can use plugins to make a section of your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with separate login details for each user …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your business site in so many different ways. From adding features that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To increasing your business reach across social sites and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your site using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate functionality on your website like customer testimonial and event registration management …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to code these functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will increase visitor engagement …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other members using forums or even set up a private online social network on your own site.
• Engage with your support staff through live chats
• Call your business directly from their cellphones when browsing your site
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

You can also integrate complex enterprise-level solutions with a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors see on your site, while the third-party application handles the technical aspects …

Useful Things To Know About Plugins

• There are many useful plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance work for you resulting from possible conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins that you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these also use resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish here for more useful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it on your site. WordPress changes on a regular basis and outdated WordPress plugins can cause problems.
• Make sure that you always keep your plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugins not only can cause errors, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most used content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

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

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

And, if by chance this WP plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you want it to do can probably be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins are and how they can enhance the functionality of your blog. See our related posts to learn about more great WP plugins that we recommend using.

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