Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the main benefits of building an online presence with WordPress is the ability to easily expand your WP website or blog’s functionality using inexpensive (even free) software called plugins.

About WP Plugins

No doubt, you most likely have a device like a mobile phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new game or a new business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

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

A WP plugin is similar to an app. You download and install an application that adds new functionality to your site …

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

Generally, adding a new feature to an existing web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, things can become quite expensive, particularly if it requires editing code.

This also applies to creating a web site. Many companies sometimes invest money in advance for added features and options they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend a modular strategy to setting up a online presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As more features or functionality are needed, just add new applications with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from within your administration panel, giving your website a whole new range of possibilities, and …

3) Cost not one cent more to add to your site?

Well, this is exactly what plugins allow you to do!

Benefits Of Using WordPress Plugins

I started this blog post by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, so do plugins.

In fact, loads of useful plugins are available at no cost to users.

WordPress plugins that you buy are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the cost of investing in professional web development services to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress makes its code publicly available, anybody can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed thousands of professional software developers to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with a basic site and add new features and enhancements to your site when required.
• Plugins allow you to add practically unlimited features to your web site easily and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give your web site practically unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to own a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and may require some configuration.

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

Like WP themes, tens of thousands of WordPress plugins are available to WP users … often at no cost!

You can view and download thousands of plugins from the Free WordPress Plugin Directory …

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

There are plugins for:

• Website Management
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Media
• Adding Media – Video, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• WordPress SEO

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

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Display ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect web links
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content
• Migrate data from non-WordPress platforms
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Inserting code and script elements into your posts
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add location maps
• Publicize your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, 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 plan to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

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

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete membership site with separate login details for all users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your web site in so many ways. From adding features that can enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to review website data …

To extending your business reach across a number of social media and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your site using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can download plugins that integrate and automate functions on your website such as user testimonial and event registration management …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to create custom functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will let you engage better with web visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other customers using forums or even set up a private online community on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Call your business from their smart phones when visiting your site
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated 3rd-party solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors will see on your site, while the third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Additional Things To Know About Plugins

• There are many plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will begin to affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It can also create more maintenance work for you as a result of potential conflicts.
• Only keep those plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for more information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it. WordPress changes regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can create errors.
• Ensure that you always keep your plugins updated. Older plugin not only can create issues, they could also have security 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 downloaded online management tool available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do what you want it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be minimal.

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

And, if by chance this WP plugin is not available, then one can probably be coded 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 expand your WordPress website. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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