Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the main benefits of building a website with WordPress is the ability to easily enhance your WordPress web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is simple and easy to install and immediately integrates new features into your smart device.

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

A WordPress plugin is quite similar to an app. You install an application that provides new functionality to your WP web site …

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

Typically, expanding the functionality of a site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things could get quite expensive, especially if it involves website development.

This is also applicable when setting up a website or business blog. Businesses will often invest money in advance for extra features they probably will never need.

To save money and keep your expenses to a minimum, we suggest using a cost-effective approach when developing your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As the need for new features or functionality arises, install new software modules with only a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your web site, giving your site a completely new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

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

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

Plugins – Benefits

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

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

WP plugins that you have to buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite low.

Also, since WordPress makes its code available to everyone, any web developer can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed many third-party software developers to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• WP plugins let you get started with a simple web site and then add new features and enhancements to your site if required.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited functionality to any site easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your website practically endless expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow business owners to have a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website with new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins can be slightly more complex and may need some configuration.

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

Like many WP themes, tens of thousands of great plugins are currently available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

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

WP plugin categories cover:

• User Management
• Content Syndication
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Inserting Media – Videocasts, Graphics & Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales & Advertising Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Applications
• Securing Your

You can expand a WordPress site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Import content from different publishing applications
• Perform bulk data edits
• Fight SPAM
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your pages
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add a map
• Post your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you virtually limitless business scalability. If you are planning to build a web site, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit by simply installing a plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can use plugins to make an area of a page or post inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with separate login details for users …

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

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

You can also add sophisticated features to your site using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate processes on your site such as managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And also set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build custom applications for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can:

• 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 shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team through online forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with your support staff via live web conferencing and chatrooms
• Call your business directly from their smart phones when browsing your website
• Get help and support via a dedicated user support helpdesk
• And much more …

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

Useful Tips About Plugins

• There are loads of plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will inevitably start to affect your website’s performance and site loading times. It can also mean more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Install only those plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize additional server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we provide here for additional expert 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 installing it. The WordPress software updates on a regular basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Make sure to always upgrade your plugins to their most recent software version. Outdated plugins not only can cause errors, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

If there is any feature you want for your web site, you can be sure that a WordPress plugin currently exists that will do exactly what you need it to do, and that this plugin can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance this WordPress plugin is not available, then one can probably be written for you for a very reasonable price.

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

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