Tag: WP Plugins

One of the most useful advantages of building an online business presence with the WordPress content publishing software is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is really simple and easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into any mobile device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

A plugin is like an app. You install and activate an application that adds new functionality to your WordPress web site …

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

Typically, adding a new feature to your site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancement, things could get quite expensive, especially if website developers need to create new code or modify programs or develop programs that integrate into your existing site.

This also applies when developing a new website or business blog. Companies will often invest money up-front in additional bells and whistles they probably will never need.

For this reason, we recommend using a modular strategy when developing a website and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need new features and functionality, add new software modules with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from within your admin panel, giving your site a whole new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent extra to add to your website?

Well, that’s exactly what plugins let you do!

WP Plugins – Benefits

We began this blog post by comparing plugins with apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, the same is true for WordPress plugins.

In fact, thousands of wonderful plugins can be downloaded to your website at no cost.

WP plugins that cost money are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite low.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, anybody can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled many third-party web development companies to build more new tools that expand the WordPress application than you can probably imagine.

• WordPress plugins let you get started with a basic yet professional website and add new features and enhancements to your site only if necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add almost endless functionality to any website quickly and cheaply.
• Plugins give your online presence almost unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a site that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website or blog instant new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins offer more extensive options and could require some configuration.

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

Like many themes, loads of plugins are available for WP users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that will do just about everything you need done.

There are plugins for:

• User Management
• Content Distribution
• Driving Site Visitors
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Site Optimization

For example, you can expand a WordPress site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Portuguese)
• 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
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect website links
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content sections
• Import content from other publishing platforms
• Perform bulk content edits
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting code and code elements into your site’s header or footer
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add business location maps
• Publicize your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a website, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you some practical uses of adding a plugin to your site.

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

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your web presence in so many ways. From adding features that enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze website metrics …

To increasing your site’s reach across various social media and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your website using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate functions on your pages like managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And also run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying web developers to code these functionality for you …

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

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other online visitors on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other customers through forums or even set up a private online social network on your own site.
• Engage with your support staff via live chats
• Dial your business from their mobile phones while visiting your pages
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

You can even integrate complex “back end” applications within a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technological aspects …

WordPress Plugins – Some Useful Tips

• There are many great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this will inevitably affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really need. Delete all inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we provide on this site for more useful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it on your website or blog. WordPress updates regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Ensure that you always upgrade your plugins. Older plugins not only can cause conflicts, they could also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

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

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

If there is a feature you need for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already created one that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that this plugin can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price to purchase it will be reasonable.

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you would like it to do can probably be created for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can enhance the functionality of your blog. See our published posts to learn about more popular plugins that we recommend using.

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