Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the most useful features of WordPress is that you can easily expand your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

About WordPress Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software that is really simple and easy to install and instantly adds new features to a mobile phone.

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

A WordPress plugin is similar to an app. You install an application that provides new functionality to your website …

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

Typically, adding new features to your website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, this can become quite expensive, particularly if web developers have to create new code or modify templates or develop scripts to integrate into your current set up.

This also applies when developing a new website or business blog. Companies will often fork out money up front for extra components they probably will never need.

To save money and keep your expenses low, we suggest considering a modular approach when growing your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a professional-looking web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need for new capabilities becomes evident, you can install new applications with a couple of mouse clicks directly from your WP administration area, to give your website or blog a completely new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to install on your website?

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

WP Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

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

In fact, thousands of plugins can be downloaded to your site at no cost.

Plugins that you purchase are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of investing in professional web development services to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, anyone can create, edit and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of third-party software development professionals to create more new tools that add new features to WordPress than you can imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to start simply with a basic web site and add new features and enhancements to your site if required.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited features to your website easily and really cheaply.
• WP plugins give you almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to have a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more advanced features and may need some initial configuring.

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that will do almost everything you could possibly want a site to do.

There are WP plugins for:

• Web Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Managing Media – Videocasts, Graphics, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Securing Your WordPress Blog

You can expand a website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation (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 interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your website
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect website links
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate content from non-WP platforms
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebars
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by simply adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with customized login details for every member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your business site in so many ways. From adding features that can enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

You can also add sophisticated features to your site using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate features on your site such as customer testimonial and event registration management …

And even run a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to build similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage better with your web visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networks.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team via online forums or even set up an online social network on your site.
• Engage with your team using live video chats
• Dial your business from their devices when visiting your pages
• Get help via a user helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex third-party applications within a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage your business marketing, while the third-party application handles the technical functions …

Some Useful Information About WP Plugins

• There are many great plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will start to affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Install only those plugins you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also consume server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium WP plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it on your website or blog. The WordPress application changes on a regular basis and older WP plugins can cause conflicts.
• Ensure that you always keep your plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugin not only can cause errors, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you need for your web site, you can be sure that a someone has probably already created one that will do just what you want, and that it can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be very reasonable.

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

And, if by chance this plugin has not been created yet, then one can probably be coded for you for a very reasonable price.

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

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