Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the most unique features of WordPress is that you can quickly and easily enhance your WP web site’s functionality using inexpensive (even 100% free) applications called plugins.

About Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is simple and easy to install and integrates new functionality into any smart phone.

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

A plugin is like an app. You download and install a little piece of software that provides new functionality to your WordPress web site …

(… you can also find social sharing plugins for WordPress sites!)

Normally, if you want to add new features to a website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things could get fairly expensive, particularly if it requires editing code.

This is also applicable when starting a new web site. Business owners will often invest up front in added bells and whistles they may probably never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a modular strategy when developing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As the need for new capabilities or functionality becomes evident, install new applications with only a couple of mouse clicks directly from your dashboard area, giving your website or blog a whole new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

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

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

Benefits Of Using Plugins

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, the same applies to plugins.

In fact, loads of plugins can be installed on your sites.

Plugins that you have to pay for are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of paying for professional web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are typically quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any web developer can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled many professional web developers to create more tools that expand WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• Plugins allow you to start off with a basic web site and expand only when required.
• Plugins allow you to add practically unlimited functionality to your online business presence quickly and very inexpensively.
• WP plugins give you virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow anyone to own a website that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website with immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more advanced and require some initial configuration.

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

Like many WP themes, thousands of WordPress plugins are currently available for WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find WordPress plugins that will do almost everything you can imagine.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Website Management
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Analysis Tools
• Website SEO

You can enhance a website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to German)
• 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 management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your website
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect affiliate links
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Import information from different CMS applications
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your content
• Add tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you virtually endless business scalability. If you are currently planning to build a website, or your existing web site was not built using WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let me show you some practical uses of installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make an area of a post or page inaccessible, or create a professional paid membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your site in lots of different ways. From adding new features that can improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze site metrics …

To extending your business reach across social sites and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate processes on your pages like displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying web developers to code similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will allow you to engage even more with web visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Share your posts with other web visitors on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with your staff via forums or even set up a private social network on your domain.
• Engage with your staff through live chats
• Dial your business directly from their smart phones when visiting your pages
• Get help and support via a dedicated user helpdesk
• And much more …

You can also integrate complex 3rd-party solutions using a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors will see on your website, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Plugins – Additional Things To Know

• There are many terrific plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will start to affect your site’s performance and page loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Install only those plugins that you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WP plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for more useful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it. WordPress updates often and older plugins can cause errors.
• Always keep all plugins upgraded to the latest software version. Outdated plugin not only can cause conflicts, they may also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do just what you need it to do, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be fairly inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance this plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you would like it to do can most certainly be developed for you for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can enhance the functionality of your blog. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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