Tag: WP Plugins

One of the main advantages of building a website with the WordPress software is that you can easily enhance your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is very easy to install and integrates new features into a smart phone.

(Just like you will find social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

A plugin is quite similar to an app. You simply install and activate a little piece of software that provides new functionality to your website or blog …

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

Typically, adding new features to an already-built web site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancement, the cost can be quite significant, especially if it involves modifying code.

This also applies when setting up a web site. Many organizations will often invest money upfront for added features they probably will never need.

To save money and keep your costs down, we recommend a modular strategy to growing your web presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a basic, professional-looking web site up and running fast, then …

2) As you need more features, just add new applications with a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your current website, giving your website an entirely new and expanded range of capabilities and functionality, and …

3) Cost not one cent more to add to your site?

Well, this is exactly what plugins let you do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits

We began this article by comparing WP plugins with smartphone 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, thousands of powerful plugins are available at no cost to users.

WordPress plugins that cost money are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of investing in web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, any web developer can create, edit and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of third-party web development professionals to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

• Plugins let you start off with just a simple site and add new features and enhancements to your site if necessary.
• Plugins let you add almost endless functionality to any web site easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your site virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow non-technical users to have a web presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more advanced features and require some configuration.

WordPress Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) Completely FREE!

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

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

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

Plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Distribution
• Driving Site Visitors
• User Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Inserting Media Files – Video, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Marketing Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• WordPress Optimization

For example, you can enhance your WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your site
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect web links
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content
• Import information from other CMS applications
• Perform bulk content edits
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting code and code elements into your content
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you endless business flexibility. If you are planning to build a web site, or your existing web site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you some practical uses of installing an inexpensive plugin on your website.

For example, if you need content protection, you can use plugins to make an area of a post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with separate login details for every member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your site in lots of ways. From adding features that improve your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To extending your site’s visibility across social networks and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that automate features on your website like user feedback and event bookings management …

And also run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying software developers to create similar functionality for you …

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

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with other members via online forums or even set up a private social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live chats
• Dial your business directly from their laptops when visiting your website
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated enterprise solutions using a WP “front end”. This enables you to control the content that your visitors will see on your web site, while the third-party application handles the technological areas …

Plugins – Some Useful Tips

• There are so many great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can start to affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It can also create more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins that you really need. Delete all deactivated plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WP plugins, ensure that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of 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 or more years), then think twice before installing it on your website or blog. The WordPress software is updated regularly and out-of-date WordPress plugins can cause errors.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can cause issues, they could also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is a feature or functionality you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do what you need it to do, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price to purchase it will be minimal.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin is not available, then one can certainly be written for you for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can significantly improve your business blog. See our published posts to learn about more useful plugins that we recommend using.

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