Tag: WordPress Plugin Directory

One of the main advantages of building an online business presence with WordPress is that you can quickly expand your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is really simple and easy to install and immediately integrates new features and functionality into a mobile phone.

(Just as there are social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

A plugin is really similar to an app. You simply install and activate a software application that provides new functionality to your WP website …

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of your web site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, this cost can be significant, especially if website developers need to add new code or modify programs or develop scripts that integrate into your current set up.

This also applies when starting a new web site. Many organizations often invest in added features and options they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend a modular strategy to growing a website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get your business website up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need arises, install new software modules with only a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your dashboard panel, giving your website an entirely new range of useful features, and …

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

Well, that’s exactly what WordPress plugins allow you to do!

Benefits Of Using Plugins

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

In fact, thousands of plugins can be downloaded to your site at no cost.

WordPress plugins that you purchase are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, anyone can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled many professional software developers to build more new tools that expand WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• WP plugins let you get started with only a simple website and then expand only when necessary.
• Plugins let you add practically endless functionality to your web site easily and really cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give you practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to have a website that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog instant new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins provide more extensive features and could require some initial configuration.

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

Like WP themes, loads of great WP plugins are available to WordPress users … often at no cost!

You can view and download thousands of plugins from the Free WordPress Plugin Directory …

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that can do almost everything you could think of.

There are WP plugins for:

• User Administration
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Uploading Media Files – Videos, Graphics, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Advertising Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Applications
• Securing Your

For example, you can enhance your business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site 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.
• Cloud storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect users from specified pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Migrate data from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert scripts and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Syndicate your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom 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 website or blog, or your existing web site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting one built on your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

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

For example, if you want content protection, you can install 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 every member …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to enhance your web site in so many ways. From installing functionality that can enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

You can also add complex features to your website using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate features on your site like displaying customer testimonials and event registration details …

And also run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying software developers to create these functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will allow you to engage more with visitors, clients and registered site users …

For example, your 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, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with other members using online forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with members of your team via live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business directly from their mobile phones while visiting your site
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

You can even integrate complex third-party applications within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological functions …

Additional Information About Plugins

• There are so many awesome plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your site’s performance and site loading speed. It also creates more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Only keep those plugins you really plan to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also consume server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, make sure you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we publish on this site for additional helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it on your website or blog. WordPress updates often and older plugins that have not been updated can create errors.
• Always update your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can cause errors and conflicts, they may also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a WP plugin currently exists that will do 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 fairly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin does not exist, then it can probably be written for you for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what they are and how they can significantly improve your business blog. See our published posts to learn about more great plugins that we recommend using.

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