Tag: WordPress Plugin Directory

One of the most useful benefits of the WordPress platform is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using inexpensive (even completely free) software called plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is very easy to install and adds new features to a mobile phone.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps …)

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

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

Almost always, adding a new feature to your website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, this cost can be fairly significant, particularly if it involves website development.

This is also applicable to creating a website. Many business owners sometimes invest money up-front for added bells and whistles they probably will never need.

To minimize business expenses, we recommend using a cost-effective strategy when setting up your digital presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As more features or functionality are required, just install new applications with a few clicks of the mouse that integrate seamlessly with your site, to give your website or blog a whole new range of practical features and capabilities, and also …

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

Well, that’s exactly what a plugin lets you do!

Benefits Of Using WordPress Plugins

I began this blog post by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some may cost a little money, the same is true of plugins.

In fact, many plugins can be installed on your sites.

Plugins that you purchase are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite low.

Also, as WordPress makes its code publicly available, anybody can create, modify and customize any part of the code. This has allowed thousands of third-party web development companies to create more tools that enhance WordPress than you can imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to start off with a basic yet professional website and add new features and enhancements to your site only as required.
• WP plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to any site quickly, easily and very inexpensively.
• Plugins give your website practically endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow anyone to have a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website with new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins offer more extensive features and require some initial configuration.

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

Just like WordPress themes, thousands of plugins are available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WordPress plugins that can do just about anything you want done.

Plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Syndication
• Increasing Site Visitors
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Media
• Inserting Media – Videos, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Marketing Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis
• Securing Your

You can enhance a website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your website
• Set appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content sections
• Import content from other publishing applications
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebars
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Publish your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you virtually limitless business flexibility. If you are planning to build a web site, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one built on your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can use plugins to make a section of a page inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your website in so many ways. From adding features that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to review website data …

To increasing your business visibility across social networks and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate features on your website like managing customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to create these applications for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your content with other online visitors on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with other users using forums or even set up an online community on your own site.
• Engage with your support staff through live chats
• Dial your business from their devices while visiting your website
• Get help via a dedicated client support helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can also integrate complex “back end” solutions using a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technological aspects …

Useful Things You Should Know About WordPress Plugins

• There are loads of terrific plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this will affect your site’s performance and page loading speed. It can also create more maintenance work for you resulting from potential errors.
• Install only those plugins you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for more expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it. The WordPress application changes regularly and older plugins can create errors.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Older plugins not only can create issues, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular content management software in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing on the subject of WP plugins:

If there is a feature or functionality you want for your web site, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do just what you need, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be reasonable.

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

And, if by chance such a WP plugin is not available, then it can probably be developed for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins are and how they can improve your web site. See our related posts section to learn more about usingplugins.

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