Tag: WP Plugins

One of the most unique advantages of building an online business presence with WordPress is the ability to quickly enhance your WordPress web site’s functionality using inexpensive (even completely free) applications called ’plugins’.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is very easy to install and immediately integrates new features into your mobile device.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps for smart phones …)

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

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

Normally, if you plan to expand the functionality of an existing site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, this could become fairly expensive, especially if web developers need to add new code or modify templates or develop programs that integrate with your existing set up.

This is also applicable to creating a new web site. Many organizations will often spend up-front on added bells and whistles they probably will never need.

To keep your business costs down, we suggest a sustainable strategy to growing your website and WordPress 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 the need for new features becomes evident, install new software modules with only a few clicks of the mouse directly from your WP administration area, and give your website a whole new and expanded range of capabilities and functionality, and also …

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

Well, this is precisely what a plugin lets you do!

Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

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

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

Plugins that cost money are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed many professional web developers to create more new tools that integrate seamlessly with WordPress than you can imagine.

• Plugins let you start off with just a simple web site and expand when necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically endless features to any site easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give you practically endless expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more advanced and may need some configuring.

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

Just like themes, thousands of WordPress plugins are made available for WP users … for FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WordPress plugins that can do almost anything you can think of.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• User Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Applications
• Blog SEO

You can expand your website with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content
• Import content from other publishing platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting code and code elements into your site’s header or footer
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add location maps
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you virtually endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing web site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional membership site with separate login details for all users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your website in so many different ways. From adding functionality that enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze visitor metrics …

To extending your business reach across multiple social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated features to your website using relatively inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate tasks on your pages like displaying customer testimonials and event registration details …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying web developers to code the same functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with other members using forums or even set up a private online social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live chats
• Dial your business directly from their devices when browsing your pages
• Get support via a dedicated client support helpdesk
• And much more …

You can also integrate complex enterprise-level applications with a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors see on your web site, while your third-party application handles the technological functions …

Plugins – Useful Information

• There are many WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this will start to affect your site’s performance and site loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you as a result of possible conflicts.
• Install only the plugins you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use extra resources.
• Many free plugins often receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide here for more useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it on your website or blog. WordPress is updated on a frequent basis and out-of-date plugins can create issues.
• Always update your plugins to their latest software version. Older plugin not only can cause errors, they may also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant features to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing regarding plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you need it to do, and that this plugin can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be quite reasonable.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin does not exist, then it can most certainly be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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