Tag: WordPress Plugin Directory

One of the most useful advantages of building a digital presence with WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily enhance your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you probably own a smart phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your device like a new game or tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is very easy to install and integrates new functionality into your smart phone.

(Just like you will find social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is very much like an app. You simply install and activate a little software application that adds new functionality to your WordPress website …

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

Typically, if you plan to add new features to your web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, this could get quite expensive, particularly if it requires editing code.

This is also applicable to creating a website. Organizations sometimes invest up-front in components they may not need.

To minimize expenses, we recommend considering a cost-effective strategy to growing your website and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need more features, just add new applications with a few mouse clicks that integrate with your current web site, to give your website or blog a whole new and expanded range of practical capabilities, and …

3) Cost not a single cent extra to install on your web site?

Well, this is exactly what WP plugins allow you to do!

Plugins – Benefits

I started this article by comparing WordPress plugins with smartphone apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, so do plugins.

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

Plugins that you buy are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of purchasing a Premium WordPress plugin to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any web developer can create, edit and customize any portion of the WP code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software development professionals to enhance the core WP software application.

• Plugins let you get started with only a simple web presence and add new features and enhancements to your site when necessary.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited functionality to your website quickly and really inexpensively.
• Plugins give your digital presence virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to have 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 functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and could require some initial configuring.

WordPress Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) 100% FREE!

Like many themes, thousands of great plugins are currently available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find plugins that can do just about anything you can think of.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• WordPress Security

You can expand a website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Automatic language translation (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
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect website pages
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Hide specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Migrate content from non-WordPress applications
• Search and replace data
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Inserting code and code elements into your site’s header and footer
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Publicize your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically endless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website, or your existing website 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 functionality.

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

For example, if you want to publish private content, you can install plugins to make an area of your page or post inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your web presence in so many different ways. From installing features that enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze site metrics …

To extending your business reach and visibility across a number of social sites and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate functionality on your website such as managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to design similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that will enhance your site’s interactivity …

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your staff using forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team through live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business directly from their devices while browsing your pages
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

You can even integrate complex enterprise solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors see on your web site, while the third-party application handles the technical functions …

WP Plugins – Additional Information

• There are many WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this can affect your site’s resources and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium 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, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish on this site for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before installing it on your website or blog. The WordPress platform is updated frequently and older WP plugins can cause issues.
• Always maintain all plugins updated. Outdated plugin not only can create errors, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most preferred online management application in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your website, you can guarantee that a WordPress plugin currently exists that will do exactly what you want, and that it can either be accessed 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 chance such a plugin does not exist, then it can certainly be created for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly expand your website. See our published posts to learn about more useful plugins that we recommend using.

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