Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the main benefits of the WordPress web site management platform is the ability to quickly and easily increase your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

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

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 into your mobile device.

(Just like you will find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very much like an app. You install and activate a little piece of software that adds new functionality to your WordPress website …

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

Normally, if you want to add new features to a web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancement, this cost can be fairly significant, especially if it requires website development.

This is also applicable when starting a new website or business blog. Many business owners sometimes invest up-front in added features they probably will never need.

For this reason, we recommend a modular strategy when growing a presence online presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal cost involved. Get your business web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As you need more features and functionality, simply add new software modules with just a few mouse clicks that integrate with your current website or blog, to give your website a whole new and expanded range of practical capabilities, and …

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

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

WordPress Plugins – Benefits

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

In fact, many plugins can be downloaded to your website at no cost.

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

Also, since WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any person can create, edit and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled many third-party web development companies to build more tools that plug seamlessly into WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins allow you to start off with a simple site and add new features and enhancements to your site when necessary.
• WP plugins let you add almost endless features to your web site quickly, easily and cheaply.
• Plugins give you virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a web presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more advanced features and may need some configuration.

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

Like many WP themes, tens of thousands of great WP plugins are available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WordPress plugins that will do just about everything you can think of.

WP plugin categories cover:

• User Management
• Content Syndication
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting
• Blog Security

For example, you can expand your business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your website
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect visitors from broken pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Migrate information from other publishing applications
• Perform bulk content edits
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your pages
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Publicize your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and many others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

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

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can install plugins to make a section of a page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your web presence in lots of ways. From adding functionality that can enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze website data …

To increasing your business reach across many social media and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your website using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your pages like displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

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

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

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team using forums or even set up a private social network on your own domain.
• Engage with your team via live webcam conferencing and chatrooms
• Call your business from their laptops while browsing your website
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated third-party applications within a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your website, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical areas …

Useful Things You Should Know About Plugins

• There are lots of fantastic plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will inevitably affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It can also create more maintenance work for you as a result of potential errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also use resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for additional expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it. The WordPress application updates regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Make sure that you always maintain all plugins up-to-date. Older plugins not only can cause issues, they could also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most preferred CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant features to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

Whatever feature you need for your website, you can guarantee that a WordPress plugin probably exists that will do just what you need, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost to buy it will be minimal.

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

And, if by chance this plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does just what you would like it to do can probably be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

***

***