Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the most powerful features of WordPress is that you can easily increase your WordPress website’s functionality using inexpensive (even free) software called ’plugins’.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you most likely own a device like a cell phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your device like a new application, game or tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Almost always, if you need to expand the functionality of a web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this can get quite expensive, especially if web developers have to add new code or edit code or develop programs that integrate with your existing site.

This also applies to creating a new website or business blog. Companies sometimes pay upfront for additional features they probably will never need.

For this reason, we recommend a modular approach when growing a web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get a basic, professional business web site up and running fast, then …

2) As new features are needed, just add new software modules with a few mouse clicks directly from within your dashboard section, giving your site a whole new range of useful features, and …

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

Well, that’s just what a plugin enables you to do!

Benefits And Advantages Of WordPress Plugins

Earlier, we compared plugins with apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, many plugins are freely available for users.

Plugins that cost money are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, since WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any web developer can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled many third-party software developers to create more plugins that plug seamlessly into the WordPress engine than you can probably imagine.

• Plugins let you get started with a basic web site and expand only when necessary.
• WP plugins let you add practically unlimited features to your site easily and quite cheaply.
• Plugins give you almost endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to have a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your web site with new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins provide more extensive features and could require some initial configuring.

Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) 100% FREE!

Just like themes, tens of thousands of plugins are available for WordPress users … for FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that can do almost anything you need your website to do.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Blog Administration
• Content Syndication
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Managing Media – Videocasts, Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your

You can expand your website with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Migrate data from non-WP applications
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your posts
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you virtually limitless business scalability. If you are planning to build a website for your business, or your existing web site wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider using it in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let me show you some practical uses of adding an inexpensive plugin to your site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of a post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional membership site with separate login details for all users …

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

To increasing your site’s reach and visibility across a number of social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can download plugins that integrate and automate functions on your site such as managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to create the same functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can let you engage more with your visitors, clients and registered site users …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your content with other web visitors 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 own domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live video chats
• Dial your business from their devices while visiting your site
• Get help and support via a dedicated client helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated enterprise-level applications within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage your business sales and marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Some Useful Tips About Plugins

• There are many WordPress plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this can invariably affect your site’s performance and page loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance work for you as a result of potential errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really use. 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 considering premium WP plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for more helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it. WordPress is updated regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can cause problems, they could also contain 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 CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant functionality to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

If there is a feature you want for your website, you can guarantee that a plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you want, and that it can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be fairly inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance such a WordPress plugin is not available, then one can probably be developed for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly improve your blog. See our related posts section to learn about more useful WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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