Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the main features of WordPress is that you can quickly enhance your WP website’s functionality using inexpensive (and often 100% free) software called plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

Like most people, you most likely have a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you want to access something new on your device like a new software or business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is similar to an app. You install and activate a software that adds new functionality to your WP website …

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

Generally, if you plan to expand the functionality of an existing website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, things could get quite expensive, especially if web developers have to add new code or modify code or install scripts that integrate with your current site.

This is also applicable when setting up a website. Businesses often invest in extra components they may not ever need.

To minimize your costs, we suggest using a sustainable strategy when growing your digital presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As new features or functionality become necessary, just install new applications with only a few clicks of the mouse directly from your WP dashboard panel, and give your website an entirely new and expanded range of useful functionality, and …

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

Well, this is exactly what plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits

I started this article by comparing plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, the same is true with plugins.

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

Plugins that you purchase are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress is an Open Source application, anyone can create, edit and customize any part of the code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software developers to create more new applications that plug seamlessly into WordPress than you can imagine.

• Plugins allow you to start off with only a simple yet professional site and expand if necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited functionality to any site easily, quickly and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your website virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow business owners to have a web presence that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website immediate capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins offer more advanced options and require some initial configuring.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that can do just about anything you want done.

There are plugins for:

• User Administration
• Content Management
• Increasing Site Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your

For example, you can enhance your website with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’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 Portuguese)
• 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 management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set 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 sitemaps
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content
• Import content from other publishing applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert code and code elements into your posts
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

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

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical uses of adding an inexpensive plugin to your site.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with separate login details for each member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your business site in so many ways. From installing functionality that enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To extending your site’s reach and visibility across multiple social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated features to your website using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate functions on your site like managing customer testimonials and event bookings …

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

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage more with your web visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other members via forums or even set up a private social network on your site.
• Engage with your support staff using live chats
• Dial your business from their cellphones while browsing your site
• Get support via a customer help desk
• And much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated enterprise-level solutions with a WP “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your website, while your third-party application handles the technological areas …

Plugins – Useful Information

• There are many WordPress plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can eventually affect your site’s resources and page loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from possible errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use additional server resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide here for more useful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it on your website or blog. The WordPress software is updated regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Always maintain all plugins updated. Older plugin not only can create problems, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable 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 about WordPress plugins:

If there is any feature you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already created one that will do what you need, and that this plugin can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost will be reasonable.

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

And, if by chance this plugin has not been created yet, then it can probably be written for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly expand your blog. See our published posts to learn more about using WordPress plugins.

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