Tag: WP Plugins

One of the main features of the WordPress web content publishing platform is that you can easily enhance your WordPress web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you probably own a device like a cell phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new software or a business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is similar to an app. You download and install a software that provides new functionality to your WP website or blog …

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

Almost always, if you decide to add a new feature to an already-built site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this can get quite expensive, particularly if website developers need to create new code or edit programs or install scripts to integrate with your existing site.

This is also applicable to setting up a new web site. Businesses often invest money up front in features they may simply not need.

For this reason, we recommend a sustainable approach to developing your web presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As more features or functionality become necessary, just install new software modules with a few mouse clicks directly from within your WP admin panel, and give your site a whole new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not one cent more to install on your website?

Well, this is exactly what a WP plugin enables you to do!

Benefits Of Plugins

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

In fact, thousands of useful plugins can be downloaded and installed on your websites.

WP plugins that you have to buy are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any web developer can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software development professionals to enhance the WPsoftware.

• WP plugins allow you to start off simply with a simple website and expand only as necessary.
• WordPress plugins let you add almost unlimited features to your web site easily, quickly and really cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give you practically endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow business owners to have a web presence that they can manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website instant new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more advanced features and could require some initial configuring.

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

Like many WordPress themes, thousands of great WP plugins are made 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 mentioned earlier, you will find WordPress plugins that can do almost everything you could think of.

There are WP plugins for:

• Web Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Driving Site Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Adding Media Files – Videos, Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales & Marketing Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Site SEO

You can enhance your website with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content 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.
• Cloud storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect users from specified pages to other pages on your site or other sites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content
• Import content from other publishing platforms
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your site’s header and footer
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Publicize your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you limitless business scalability. If you are currently planning to build a web site, or your existing site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by simply installing a plugin on your web site.

For example, if you want to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your business site in lots of ways. From adding features that can improve your business, your website visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To increasing your business reach across social media and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can install plugins that integrate and automate features on your pages like customer feedback and event registrations management …

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

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can increase your site’s interactivity …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your support staff via forums or even set up a private online social network on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live web conferencing and chatrooms
• Call your business from their smart phones when visiting your website
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex “back end” applications within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors will see on your web site, while the third-party application handles the technical side of things …

Plugins – Additional Information

• There are loads of plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this can invariably affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential conflicts.
• Install only those plugins that you really need to use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these utilize extra server resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our WordPress plugin recommendations for additional useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it on your website or blog. The WordPress software updates on a regular basis and outdated plugins can create problems.
• Always keep your plugins upgraded to the most recent software version. Outdated plugins not only can create errors and conflicts, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is a feature or functionality you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a plugin probably exists that will do what you need it to do, and that this plugin can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be reasonable.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin has not been created yet, then one can probably be written for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what plugins are and how they can enhance the functionality of your blog. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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