Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the most useful benefits of the WordPress platform is the ability to easily increase your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

About Plugins

No doubt, you most likely own a cell phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your phone like a new game or business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is easy to install and immediately adds new functionality to a smart phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps for mobile phones …)

A plugin is very much like an app. You install and activate a software that provides new functionality to your website …

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

Normally, if you need to expand the functionality of a site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, this can become quite expensive, especially if it requires modifying code.

This is also applicable when creating a new website. Many companies often fork out money in advance on features or customizations they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest using a cost-effective strategy to setting up your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a basic, professional-looking web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As the need for new capabilities and functionality becomes evident, you can add new software modules with just a few clicks of the mouse directly from your WordPress administration area, giving your website an entirely new range of features and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to add to your website?

Well, that’s exactly what a plugin enables you to do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

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

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

WP plugins that you purchase are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of a Premium WordPress plugin to the cost of paying for professional web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any person can create, rewrite and customize any part of the code. This has enabled many professional web developers to build more new applications that enhance the WordPress platform than you can probably imagine.

• WordPress plugins allow you to start off simply with only a simple web site and then add new features and enhancements to your site if necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost endless features to your site easily, quickly and really cheaply.
• Plugins give your site practically unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” 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 provide your site with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and may require some configuration.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WP plugins that can do just about everything you can think of.

Plugin categories cover:

• Site Management
• Content Management
• Increasing Site Visitors
• User Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting
• Securing Your WordPress Web Site

For example, you can enhance a WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your site
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect web links
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content sections
• Import information from non-WordPress platforms
• Perform bulk data edits
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your website’s header or footer
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add business location maps
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you limitless business flexibility. If you are currently planning to build a website for your business, or your existing website wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider using it in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let me show you some practical advantages of installing a plugin on your website.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post inaccessible, or create a professional paid membership site with customized login details for every member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your website in lots of ways. From adding functionality that improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

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

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to code these functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will make your site even more interactive …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team members via online forums or even set up an online community on your site.
• Engage with members of your team using live chats
• Call your business directly from their smart phones when browsing your pages
• Get help and support via a client helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can also integrate complex enterprise-level solutions within a WP “front end”. This allows you to control the content that your visitors see on your site, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical functions …

WP Plugins – Useful Information

• There are so many great WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this can start to affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Only keep the plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also use resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid plugins, make sure you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for more expert information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before installing it. The WordPress core application is updated frequently and out-of-date WP plugins can create problems.
• Always upgrade your plugins to their most recent software version. Outdated plugin not only can cause errors and conflicts, they could also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

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

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is a functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a plugin currently exists that will do what you need, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost will be surprisingly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance such a WordPress plugin is not available, then one can probably be created for your business for a very reasonable price.

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

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