Tag: WordPress Plugin Directory

One of the main benefits of building a website using the WordPress web content management platform is that you can quickly and easily enhance your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

Like most people, you probably own a mobile phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your device like a new game or a tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is simple and easy to install and immediately integrates new features into your smart device.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A WordPress plugin is quite similar to an app. You simply install and activate an application that provides new functionality to your website or blog …

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WP!)

Normally, adding a new feature to an existing site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, the cost can be significant, particularly if web developers have to create new code or modify templates or develop scripts to integrate into your existing site.

This is also applicable to starting a website or business blog. Companies often pay for added bells and whistles they may simply not need.

To save money and keep your costs down, we recommend using a sustainable approach to developing a website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get a web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As new features or functionality are needed, add new applications with only a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your WP dashboard panel, to give your website or blog a completely new range of capabilities and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar more to add to your site?

Well, this is just what plugins let you do!

Benefits & Advantages Of Using Plugins

I started this post by comparing plugins with apps. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some may cost a little money, the same applies to WP plugins.

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

WP plugins that you purchase are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, anyone can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of professional web developers to enhance and contribute to the WordPresssoftware.

• WordPress plugins let you get started simply with a simple yet professional website and then add new features and enhancements to your site if required.
• Plugins allow you to add practically endless features to any web site quickly and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your web site almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website or blog with instant new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins are slightly more advanced and may require some configuring.

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

Like WordPress themes, thousands of great WP plugins are made available to WordPress users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find WordPress plugins that can do almost anything you need done.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Web Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Media Management Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Applications
• WordPress Security

You can expand a WP site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from specific pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Import information from non-WordPress platforms
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Insert code and script elements into your website’s header or footer
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you virtually endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a web site for your business, or your existing website isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let’s take a look at 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 an area of your page or post inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your web site in lots of different ways. From installing functionality that will enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To increasing your site’s visibility across social networks and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your pages such as customer feedback and event registration management …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying web developers to build similar applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can increase visitor 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 feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other members through forums or even set up a private community on your own domain.
• Engage with your support team through live web conferencing and chatrooms
• Dial your business directly from their smart phones while browsing your website
• Get help via a dedicated user support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex enterprise solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to manage your business sales and marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological functions …

Additional Information About Plugins

• There are lots of great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this will begin to affect your site’s resources and page loading times. It can also mean more maintenance work for you as a result of potential errors.
• Install only the plugins you really need. Delete any plugins from your site, as these utilize extra server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it. WordPress changes often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Always maintain your plugins updated. Older plugins not only can cause problems, they may also contain 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 downloaded 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 about WP plugins:

If there is a feature you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that this plugin can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be reasonably inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin does not exist, then one can certainly be written for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can help expand your WP website. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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