Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the most unique benefits of using WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily enhance your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using applications called plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

Like most people, you probably use a device like a cell phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new application, software or a business tool?

You download and install an app!

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

(Just like you will find social sharing apps for smart phones …)

A WP plugin is really similar to an app. You simply install an application that adds new functionality to your WordPress website …

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

Typically, expanding the functionality of an already-built site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, the cost can be fairly significant, particularly if it requires editing code.

This also applies to developing a new web site. Businesses sometimes spend money in advance on components they probably will never need.

For this reason, we recommend using a sustainable strategy when developing your web presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a basic, professional business website up and running fast, then …

2) As more features and functionality are required, you can add new software modules with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from within your administration area, to give your web site a whole new range of capabilities and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to add to your website?

Well, that’s just what WP plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits

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

In fact, thousands of fantastic plugins can be downloaded to your website for free.

WP plugins that you have to buy are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of buying a Premium WP plugin to the cost of paying for web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite low.

Also, since WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anyone can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has enabled many third-party software development professionals to enhance and contribute to the WordPresssoftware.

• WordPress plugins let you start simply with only a simple website and add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to any online business presence quickly, easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your online business presence almost endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow anyone to own a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and may need some initial configuration.

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

Like many WP themes, tens of thousands of WP plugins are currently available for WordPress users … for FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that will do almost anything you can possibly want your website to do.

There are WP plugins for:

• Web Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Media
• Managing Media – Videocasts, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Increasing Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Analysis Applications
• Site SEO

You can enhance a WordPress site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• 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 website’s content from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Import data from other CMS applications
• Perform bulk content edits
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Insert code and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add location maps
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many 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 practically limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog, or your existing website wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by simply adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can use plugins to make a section of a page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with separate login details for users …

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

To extending your site’s visibility across social sites and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate processes on your website such as displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying web developers to create custom functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can enhance your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other users via forums or even set up a private online social network on your site.
• Engage with your team via live video chats
• Call your business directly from their mobile phones when browsing your website
• Get help and support via a user helpdesk
• And much more …

You can also integrate complex “back end” solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technological functions …

Useful Information About WordPress Plugins

• There are many great WordPress plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your website’s resources and page loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you as a consequence of potential conflicts.
• Install only the plugins you really need to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also consume resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid WordPress plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for additional useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it. WordPress updates often and older WP plugins can create conflicts.
• Ensure to always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can create conflicts, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most used online open source software in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new features to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing on the subject of WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your website, you can be sure that a WP plugin currently exists that will do what you want, and that this plugin can either be downloaded 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 WP plugin does not exist, then it can certainly be developed for you for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can improve your business blog. See our related posts section to learn about more useful WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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