Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the most powerful benefits of the WordPress web content publishing software is the ability to quickly increase your WP website’s functionality using applications called plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

No doubt, you most likely use a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you want to access something new on your phone like a new game or a new tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is simple and easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into any mobile device.

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

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

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

Normally, expanding the functionality of a site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancements, the cost can be significant, especially if it requires editing code.

This is also applicable when creating a new web site. Companies often invest upfront for additional features they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a cost-effective strategy to developing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As new features become necessary, add new software modules with just a couple of mouse clicks directly from your administration panel, giving your website a whole new range of features and functionality, and also …

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

Well, this is precisely what a WP plugin enables you to do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

We began this article by comparing WordPress plugins with mobile apps. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, the same is true for plugins.

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

Plugins that you have to buy are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of investing in professional web development services to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress makes its code available to everyone, anyone can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of third-party software development companies to enhance the core software application.

• Plugins let you start off with a basic yet professional web presence and then add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically endless functionality to any online business presence easily, quickly and really cheaply.
• Plugins give your digital presence virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical users to own a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your web site with new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins can be slightly more complex and may need some initial configuration.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you will find plugins that will do just about anything you could imagine.

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Management
• Content Syndication
• Web Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting
• WordPress SEO

For example, you can expand a business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect website links
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content
• Import content from non-WP platforms
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert code and script elements into your posts
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing web site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider getting one built on your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by simply installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make an area of your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your business site in lots of different ways. From adding new features that can enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

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

You can also add complex functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate tasks on your site like displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

And even run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to code similar functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage in various ways with your web visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other web visitors on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other users using forums or even set up an online community on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team via live video chats
• Dial your business from their cellphones when visiting your website
• Get help and support via a client support helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can even integrate complex third-party solutions within a WP “front end”. This enables you to control your business marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological areas …

WordPress Plugins – Additional Things To Know

• There are loads of useful plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will eventually affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential conflicts.
• Only keep those plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for additional 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 carefully before using it on your website or blog. WordPress is updated on a regular basis and older plugins can cause problems.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can cause conflicts, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most used CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

If there is a feature you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already created one that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be reasonably affordable.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin is not available, then it can certainly be coded for your business for a reasonable price.

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

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