Tag: WordPress Plugin

One of the most powerful benefits of WordPress is the ability to easily expand your WordPress website’s functionality using applications called ’plugins’.

What Are WP Plugins?

Like most people, you probably have a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you want to access something new on your device like a new software or a tool?

You download and install an app!

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

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is really similar to an app. You simply install and activate a software that adds new functionality to your web site …

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

Normally, if you decide to expand the functionality of a website, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancements, the cost can be significant, particularly if website developers have to create new code or edit programs or install programs to integrate with your current set up.

This is also applicable to developing a website. Business owners tend to fork out money in advance on features they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest using a modular approach when developing a digital presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get your web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need becomes evident, add new applications with a few mouse clicks that integrate with your current website, giving your website or blog an entirely new range of possibilities, and …

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

Well, this is just what a plugin lets you do!

Plugins – Benefits

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

In fact, loads of plugins can be installed and activated on your websites.

WordPress plugins that cost money are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of investing in professional web development services to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, since WordPress makes its code available to everyone, anybody can create, edit and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many third-party web development professionals to enhance and contribute to the core software application.

• WP plugins let you start off with just a basic web presence and expand if necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add almost endless features to your website easily and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give you virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow anyone to have a website that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website with immediate capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins can be a little more complex and could require some configuring.

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

Just like themes, tens of thousands of great plugins are available for WordPress users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

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

There are plugins for:

• Website Management
• Content Distribution
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Engagement
• Social Media
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Website Security

You can add features to your WP site 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 billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Automatic language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect web links
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Import content from other CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Inserting code and script elements into your blog’s header or footer
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Syndicate your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing website isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

In case 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 protect your content, you can install plugins to make a section of a page or post inaccessible, or create a professional paid membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your website in lots of ways. From installing functionality that will enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to review visitor metrics …

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

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate features on your website like user testimonial and event registration management …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to create the same functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can let you engage even more with your visitors, customers and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other online users via online forums or even set up a private community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live chats
• Dial your business directly from their smart phones while visiting your site
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated “back end” solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to manage your business marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical side of things …

Additional Things You Should Know About WordPress Plugins

• There are so many plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will eventually begin to affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It can also mean more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize extra resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WordPress 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 the plugin reviews we publish on this site for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it. The WordPress software is updated frequently and older plugins can create problems.
• Ensure to always upgrade your plugins to the latest version. Outdated plugins not only can create errors and conflicts, they could also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular digital content open source tool available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

If there is a feature you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a plugin probably exists that will do just what you want, and that this plugin can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be fairly affordable.

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

And, if by chance this WordPress plugin does not exist, then one can probably be coded for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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