Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the main features of the WordPress software is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WordPress site’s functionality using inexpensive called plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

No doubt, you most likely use a smart phone. What happens when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new software or business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into any mobile phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Typically, expanding the functionality of a site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, things could become fairly expensive, especially if website developers have to add new code or modify code or install scripts to integrate into your current set up.

This is also applicable when developing a web site. Many businesses sometimes invest in added components they probably will never need.

For this reason, we suggest using a sustainable strategy when developing a web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need new features, you can install new software modules with a few mouse clicks that integrate with your existing web site, giving your web site a completely new and expanded range of useful functionality, and also …

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

Well, that’s exactly what WP plugins let you do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

Earlier, we compared WordPress plugins with apps. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, loads of wonderful plugins are freely available for users.

Plugins that you have to pay for are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of paying for web development services to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite low.

Also, because WordPress is an Open Source application, anyone can create, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed many third-party software development companies to enhance the core software application.

• Plugins allow you to start simply with only a simple yet professional site and add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• Plugins let you add almost endless functionality to your web presence quickly, easily and quite inexpensively.
• Plugins give your online business presence virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow non-technical users to have a digital presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with new capabilities and features.
• Some plugins offer more advanced options and require some configuration.

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

Just like themes, thousands of WP plugins are made available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that will do just about anything you could think of.

Plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Management
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Inserting Media – Video, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting
• Blog Security

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

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (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
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content sections
• Import data from non-WP platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert code and code elements into your posts
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you practically limitless business scalability. If you are planning to build a web site for your business, or your existing web site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

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 installing an inexpensive plugin on your website.

For example, if you want to publish private content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your web presence in so many ways. From installing functionality that will improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze site metrics …

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

You can also add complex functionality to your website using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your site such as managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to create the same functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can increase your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team members through forums or even set up a private online community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Call your business directly from their cellphones when visiting your pages
• Get help and support via a customer support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex enterprise solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical areas …

Useful Information About Plugins

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this will affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really need to use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use extra resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid WordPress plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our WordPress plugin recommendations for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it on your website or blog. The WordPress platform is updated often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Ensure that you always upgrade your plugins to their latest software version. Outdated plugins not only can cause conflicts, they could also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable content management system available. 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 plugins:

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

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

And, if by chance this WP plugin does not exist, then one can certainly be created 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 expand your website. See our related posts section to learn more about using WordPress plugins.

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