Tag: WP Plugins

One of the main advantages of choosing the WordPress website publishing software is the ability to quickly and easily enhance your WP website or blog’s functionality using applications called plugins.

What Are Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is simple and easy to install and instantly adds new features to your mobile phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps for smart devices …)

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

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

Generally, if you want to expand the functionality of your site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, things can get quite expensive, especially if website developers need to add new code or modify programs or develop programs to integrate with your existing site.

This is also applicable to starting a new website or business blog. Businesses sometimes invest money up-front in extra components they may simply not need.

To keep expenses down, we suggest a sustainable approach when setting up a web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal cost involved. Get your web site up and running fast, then …

2) As you need new features and functionality, simply install new software modules with only a few mouse clicks directly from your administration panel, giving your site a completely new and expanded range of useful features, and …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to add to your web site?

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

Plugins – Benefits

I started this article by comparing plugins with apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, the same is true for WordPress plugins.

In fact, many wonderful plugins are freely available for users.

WP plugins that you have to buy are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of a Premium plugin to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, because WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any person can create, edit and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of third-party software development companies to create more applications that work seamlessly with the WordPress engine than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins let you start off simply with only a basic yet professional website and expand only when necessary.
• WP plugins let you add almost unlimited functionality to your web site easily and very inexpensively.
• Plugins give your web site almost endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins can be slightly more advanced and may require some configuring.

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

Just like themes, loads of great plugins are currently available to WP users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that will do almost everything you can think of.

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Administration
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Managing Media Files – Video, Graphics, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Applications
• Securing Your

You can enhance your business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect visitors from specified 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
• Hide certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Import data from different CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Distribute your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

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

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

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can install plugins to make an area of your page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete membership site with personal login details for each user …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your business site in so many ways. From installing functionality that can enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To increasing your site’s visibility across social sites and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate features on your site like managing customer testimonials and event registration details …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to code similar functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that will enhance user engagement …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your posts with other web visitors on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other online users using online forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team via live chats
• Call your business from their mobile phones while browsing your pages
• Get help via a dedicated user help desk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated 3rd-party solutions using a WP “front end”. This enables you to control your business marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological side of things …

Plugins – Useful Information

• There are many fantastic plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can begin to affect your site’s performance and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Only keep the plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for additional helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before installing it. WordPress updates regularly and out-of-date WordPress plugins can create problems.
• Always maintain your plugins updated. Older plugins not only can cause conflicts, they may also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable content publishing application available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing on the subject of WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature you need for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already developed one that will do exactly what you want, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost to buy it will be reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance such a WP plugin has not been created yet, then it can most certainly be developed for you for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins 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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