Tag: WP Plugins

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

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you probably own a device like a cell phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new game or business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is easy to install and adds new features to your smart phone.

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

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

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

Typically, adding new features to your website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, things can become fairly expensive, particularly if web developers need to add new code or modify programs or develop scripts to integrate with your current site.

This is also applicable when developing a new website or business blog. Businesses will often spend up front on additional components they may simply not need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend considering a cost-effective approach to setting up your website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get a professional business web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As the need becomes evident, you can install new software modules with a couple of mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your website and blog, giving your website an entirely new and expanded range of features and functionality, and …

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

Well, that’s just what WordPress plugins let you do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Using Plugins

Earlier, we compared WordPress plugins with apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, the same is true with plugins.

In fact, loads of great plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

WordPress plugins that cost money are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of purchasing a Premium plugin to the cost of paying for professional web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any part of the code. This has enabled many third-party software development companies to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

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

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

Like many themes, loads of plugins are available to WordPress users … for FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find WordPress plugins that will do just about everything you can possibly want your website to do.

There are plugins for:

• Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Uploading Media Files – Video, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Advertising Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Analysis Applications
• Site SEO

For example, you can add features to your business online presence with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site 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.
• Offline storage integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect web pages
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Migrate information from other CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Insert scripts and code elements into your posts and pages
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add location maps
• Publish your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and many others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you virtually limitless business scalability. If you are currently planning to build a web site for your business, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by installing a plugin on your website.

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 your page inaccessible, or create a professional paid membership site with customized login details for users …

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

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

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate functionality on your website such as user feedback and event bookings management …

And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to design the same functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will increase visitor engagement …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team via forums or even set up an online community on your site.
• Engage with your staff via live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business from their laptops when visiting your website
• Open support tickets
• And much more …

You can even integrate complex third-party applications using a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical side of things …

Plugins – Useful Things You Should Know

• There are lots of WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this can invariably begin to affect your site’s performance and page loading speed. It also creates more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of possible errors.
• Only keep the plugins you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also consume resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid WordPress plugins, make sure you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we publish on this site for additional helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. WordPress changes regularly and outdated plugins can create conflicts.
• Always keep your plugins upgraded to the most recent software version. Older plugins not only can create errors and conflicts, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

If there is a functionality you want for your website, you can guarantee that a WP plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you need, and that it can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price 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 a custom plugin that does exactly what you want it to do can probably be created for you for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can significantly enhance the functionality of your business blog. See our published posts to learn about more popular plugins that we recommend using.

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