Tag: WordPress Plugin Directory

One of the most unique advantages of building a website using WordPress is the ability to easily increase your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you most likely own a cell phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your phone like a new application, software or a business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is simple and easy to install and instantly integrates new features into a mobile device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A plugin is quite similar to an app. You download and install an application that adds new functionality to your web site …

(… you can also find social sharing plugins for WP users!)

Almost always, adding a new feature to your site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancements, this can get quite expensive, especially if it requires programming code.

This also applies when setting up a website. Many business owners sometimes invest money upfront in bells and whistles they may not ever need.

To minimize your expenses, we suggest a sustainable strategy to developing your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As new features and functionality are required, add new software modules with a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your WordPress administration area, giving your website or blog an entirely new range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not one cent extra to download and install on your web site?

Well, that’s precisely what a plugin allows you to do!

Plugins – Benefits

Earlier, we compared plugins with apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, the same applies with WordPress plugins.

In fact, loads of great plugins can be downloaded to your website for free.

WordPress plugins that you buy are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of paying for professional web development services to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress is an Open Source application, anyone can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled many third-party web development companies to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• WordPress plugins allow you to start off with just a simple yet professional website and add new features and enhancements to your site if necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost endless features to any web site quickly and cheaply.
• Plugins give you practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow business owners to have a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site immediate enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more advanced and may require some initial configuration.

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

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

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

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

There are plugins for:

• Blog Administration
• Content Distribution
• Increasing Web Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting Tools
• Optimizing Your

You can add features to your website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Import content from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk content edits
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and code elements into your blog’s header or footer
• Add tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Publish your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you endless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog, or your existing website was not built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can install plugins to make a section of a page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete membership site with customized login details for every member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your web site in lots of different ways. From adding features that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to review website data …

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

You can also add sophisticated features to your website using relatively inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate tasks on your website like customer feedback and event registration management …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to create the same applications for you …

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

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team members through online forums or even set up a private online community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live video chats
• Call your business from their cellphones when visiting your website
• Get support via a dedicated client help desk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated enterprise-level applications with a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to control the content that your visitors see on your site, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

WP Plugins – Useful Things To Know

• There are lots of plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can start to affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential errors.
• Install only those 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 developer. When considering paid plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our WordPress plugin reviews for more expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. The WordPress core software is updated on a regular basis and outdated plugins can create problems.
• Ensure to always keep your plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugin not only can cause issues, they could also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important aspect of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most used digital content open source software in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do just what you want, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you would like it to do can probably be coded for you at a reasonable cost.

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

***

***