Tag: WP Plugins

One of the main advantages of choosing WordPress is that you can easily increase your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

Like most of us, you probably use a device like a cell phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your device like a new game or a tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

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

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

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

Almost always, if you decide to add a new feature to your website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things could get fairly expensive, particularly if it requires programming code.

This is also applicable when starting a new web site. Business owners will often fork out money for added features or options they may not need.

To save money and keep costs down, we recommend using a sustainable approach to setting up a website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As you need more features, simply add new applications with a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your WP admin panel, giving your site an entirely new and expanded range of possibilities, and …

3) Cost not one cent extra to add to your web site?

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

Benefits & Advantages Of Using Plugins

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with apps. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, the same is true for WordPress plugins.

In fact, loads of plugins are freely available for WordPress users.

WP plugins that you purchase are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anybody can create, edit and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has enabled many third-party web development professionals to create more new tools that “plug into” WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to start off with a basic site and then add new features and enhancements to your site as required.
• Plugins let you add almost endless functionality to any website easily, quickly and cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give you practically endless expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow business owners to own a website that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be slightly more advanced and could require some configuration.

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

Like many WP themes, loads of plugins are made available to WP users … often at $0 cost!

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

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

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Blog Administration
• Content Distribution
• Increasing Web Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting
• Optimizing Your WordPress Site

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

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your site
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from specific pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate information from non-WP applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Insert scripts and code elements into your posts and pages
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add business location maps
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you virtually limitless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website for your business, or your existing site was not built using WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog built on your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by adding a plugin to your web site.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post or page inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your web site in so many different ways. From adding functionality that can enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to review site metrics …

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

You can also add advanced features to your site using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate functionality on your pages like user feedback and event registration management …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build similar functionality for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on social media.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your support staff using online forums or even set up a private online social network on your site.
• Engage with your support team through live video chats
• Dial your business directly from their smart phones while browsing your site
• Get support via a customer helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex “back end” solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your web site, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical functions …

Some Useful Information About WordPress Plugins

• There are lots of good plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can invariably start to affect your website’s performance and page loading times. It can also create more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible conflicts.
• Install only those plugins you really use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these use extra resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium plugins, we recommend that you check around a little 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 more expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it on your website. The WordPress core application changes on a regular basis and out-of-date WP plugins can cause issues.
• Always upgrade your plugins to their latest version. Outdated plugin not only can create conflicts, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

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

One last thing about plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a WordPress plugin currently exists that will do exactly what you need, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be surprisingly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then it can most certainly be coded for you for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can help to improve your website. See our published posts to learn more about using WordPress plugins.

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