Tag: WP Plugins

One of the most useful benefits of building a digital business presence with the WordPress platform is that you can easily enhance your WP site’s functionality using plugins.

About Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is really simple and easy to install and adds new features to a smart device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps for mobile phones …)

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

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

Almost always, if you decide to expand the functionality of an already-built web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, the cost can be quite significant, particularly if web developers have to add new code or modify templates or install programs to integrate into your current site.

This is also applicable when setting up a new website or business blog. Many companies will often pay money in advance for additional bells and whistles they may probably never need.

To keep expenses down, we suggest a sustainable strategy when growing your website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As you need new features, add new applications with just a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate seamlessly with your website, to give your site an entirely new range of practical features and capabilities, and …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to download and install on your website?

Well, that’s precisely what a WordPress plugin lets you do!

Plugins – Benefits

Earlier, we compared plugins with apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some may cost a little money, the same applies to plugins.

In fact, many plugins are freely available for users.

WP plugins that you have to buy are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software developers to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you start off simply with a basic site and expand when required.
• Plugins allow you to add almost endless functionality to any site easily, quickly and quite inexpensively.
• WP plugins give you virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to own a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site instant new enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and could require some initial configuring.

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that will do almost everything you could possibly want your web site to do.

There are plugins for:

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

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

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your website
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from certain pages to other pages on your site or other sites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Migrate information from non-WP platforms
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting code and code elements into your posts
• Add 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
• Publicize your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

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

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of installing a plugin on your web site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can use plugins to make an area of your page or post inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with separate login details for every user …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your website in lots of different ways. From installing new features that will enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

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

You can also add sophisticated features to your website using relatively inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate functionality on your site such as managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to create custom applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post 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 shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your content with other online visitors on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other users through forums or even set up an online community on your own site.
• Engage with your support staff via live chats
• Call your business directly from their devices when browsing your pages
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex enterprise solutions using a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors see on your website, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical side of things …

Some Useful Information About WP Plugins

• There are loads of great WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can eventually start to affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance work for you as a result of potential errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide here for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it. WordPress updates often and older plugins can cause conflicts.
• Always maintain your plugins updated. Outdated plugin not only can cause problems, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular content publishing application in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new features to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

If there is any feature you want for your website, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already developed one that will do what you need it to do, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost to purchase it will be surprisingly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance such a plugin has not been created yet, then it can probably be created for you for a very reasonable price.

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

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