Tag: WordPress Plugin

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

Understanding WordPress Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

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

(Just as you can find social sharing apps for smart devices …)

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

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

Typically, if you want to expand the functionality of a website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, the cost can be significant, especially if website developers need to add new code or edit programs or develop programs that integrate into your existing site.

This is also applicable when creating a new website or business blog. Businesses tend to spend money up front on added features and options they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest using a modular strategy to developing a web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply with minimal cost involved. Get a professional business web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need becomes evident, add new applications with a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your web site, and give your web site an entirely new range of possibilities, and also …

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

Well, this is precisely what WordPress plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with mobile apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, loads of useful plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

Plugins that cost money are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of a Premium plugin to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, any web developer can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed many professional web developers to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

• Plugins let you get started with a simple yet professional web presence and add new features and enhancements to your site when required.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to your web site quickly, easily and cheaply.
• WP plugins give your online business presence almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow non-technical users to own a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your site instant new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced options and may need some configuration.

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

Like themes, tens of thousands of WordPress plugins are made available to WP users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

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

WP plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your WP Blog

You can add features to a website with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer 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.
• Cloud storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect web links
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content sections
• Import data from different publishing applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting code and code elements into your website’s header or footer
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add business location maps
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you virtually endless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website or blog, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by simply installing an inexpensive plugin on your website.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can install plugins to make an area of a post inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for all users …

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

To extending your business reach and visibility across social sites and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your site using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate processes on your site such as managing customer testimonials and event registration details …

And even set up a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to code the same functionality for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your posts with other online visitors on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your support staff through forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with your staff via live chats
• Call your business from their mobile phones when visiting your site
• Get help via a user help desk
• And much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise-level solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technological side of things …

WordPress Plugins – Additional Tips

• There are many plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of possible conflicts.
• Only keep the plugins you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WP plugins, make sure 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 the plugin reviews we provide on this site for additional helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it on your website or blog. The WordPress platform updates regularly and outdated plugins can create conflicts.
• Ensure that you always update your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can cause conflicts, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

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

One last thing about WP plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do exactly what you want, and that this plugin can either be accessed 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 any chance this plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you need it to do can probably be developed for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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