Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the most useful benefits of using WordPress is that you can quickly enhance your WP website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a software that is really easy to install and integrates new features into any smart device.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps for smart phones …)

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

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

Normally, adding a new feature to a web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, the cost can be quite significant, especially if it involves website development.

This also applies to developing a new website. Organizations tend to pay for additional bells and whistles they may not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend a sustainable approach when growing a web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get a basic, professional-looking website up and running quickly, then …

2) As new features and functionality are required, add new applications with just a few mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your website, giving your web site an entirely new range of useful functionality, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to install on your site?

Well, that’s just what WP plugins allow you to do!

WP Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

We began this blog post by comparing WP plugins with apps. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some may cost a little money, the same applies with WordPress plugins.

In fact, many plugins can be installed and activated on your sites.

WP plugins that you have to pay for are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any person can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has enabled many professional software developers to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you start off with a simple site and then expand when required.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited functionality to any online business presence easily, quickly and very cheaply.
• Plugins give you practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow business owners to have a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website or blog instant new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins offer more advanced features and may require some initial configuring.

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

Like WP themes, tens of thousands of WP plugins are currently available for WordPress users … for FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WP plugins that will do almost anything you could imagine.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Web Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Media Management Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Analysis Applications
• Web Site SEO

For example, you can enhance your website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect web links
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Import data from different publishing applications
• Search and replace data
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your posts
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add a map
• Publish your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a web site, or your existing site wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you some practical advantages of adding an inexpensive plugin to your site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete paid membership site with separate login details for every user …

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

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

You can also add sophisticated features to your website using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate functions on your pages like user testimonial and event bookings management …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to build the same functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will let you engage even more with web visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with other online users using online forums or even set up a private online social network on your own domain.
• Engage with your staff through live chats
• Dial your business directly from their smart phones when visiting your pages
• Get support via a client support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex “back end” solutions with a WP “front end”. This allows you to control your business marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical areas …

WordPress Plugins – Useful Tips

• There are many useful plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this can affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you as a result of possible conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really need to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WP plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check our WP 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 using it on your website. WordPress updates frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create problems.
• Ensure that you always update your plugins. Older plugins not only can cause errors and conflicts, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most used content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do what you want, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be minimal.

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

And, if by chance such a WP plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you need it to do can most certainly be written for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can help improve your website. See our related posts to learn more about using WordPress plugins.

***

***