Tag: WordPress Plugin Directory

One of the main benefits of WordPress is that you can easily increase your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

Like most people, you probably own a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new application, software or business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is easy to install and adds new features to a smart phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

A WP plugin is very much like an app. You install an application that adds new functionality to your WordPress website or blog …

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

Normally, adding a new feature to a website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, this cost can be significant, especially if it involves programming code.

This is also applicable when developing a web site. Many companies sometimes invest up-front for bells and whistles they probably will never need.

To avoid incurring unnecessary costs, we recommend a sustainable strategy when developing your web presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As you need new features and functionality, simply install new software modules with just a few mouse clicks that integrate with your current website, giving your website an entirely new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to download and install on your website?

Well, this is precisely what a WordPress plugin allows you to do!

Benefits & Advantages Of WordPress Plugins

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

In fact, thousands of fantastic plugins can be installed on your websites.

WP plugins that you purchase are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of paying for web development services to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any person can create, modify and customize any part of the code. This has allowed thousands of professional software development companies to enhance the WPsoftware.

• WP plugins allow you to get started with a basic site and add new features and enhancements to your site only if necessary.
• WP plugins allow you to add practically unlimited functionality to your web site easily, quickly and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your site practically endless expansion capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical users to own a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website or blog with new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins are a little more advanced and may require some configuring.

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

Like WordPress themes, tens of thousands of plugins are made available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that can do almost everything you need done.

There are WP plugins for:

• Site Administration
• Content Management
• Driving Web Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Applications
• Web Site Optimization

For example, you can add features to a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your website
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect visitors from broken pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content sections
• Import information from other publishing applications
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting code and script elements into your content
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing web site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you how you can benefit by simply adding a plugin to your web site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete paid membership site with separate login details for all users …

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

To increasing your site’s reach across many social sites and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your site using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate features on your website like managing customer testimonials and event registration details …

And even run a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to code the same functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can increase your site’s interactivity …

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 function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social media.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your staff via forums or even set up an online social network on your site.
• Engage with your support staff via live chats
• Dial your business directly from their laptops when browsing your site
• Open support tickets
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex enterprise-level applications using a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage your business sales and marketing, while your third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Plugins – Useful Things You Should Know

• There are lots of good plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will inevitably begin to affect your site’s resources and page loading times. It also creates more maintenance issues for you resulting from possible conflicts.
• Only keep those plugins you really use. Delete any plugins 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 WP 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 WordPress plugin recommendations for more useful 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 installing it on your website. WordPress updates on a frequent basis and outdated WordPress plugins can create problems.
• Always upgrade your plugins to their most recent software version. Outdated plugins not only can cause issues, they could also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable web open source application available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

If there is a feature you need for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do just what you want it to do, and that this plugin can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance such a plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you need it to do can probably be created for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WP plugins – what plugins are and how they can help improve your blog. See our published posts to learn more about using WordPress plugins.

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