WordPress Features Explained – WordPress Themes

WordPress Themes – Powerful, Flexible & Cost-Effective Web Design

Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress has simplified the process of web design and web development.

This is great news for anyone wanting an online presence that they can fully manage themselves.

Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of easy-to-use content management systems, if you wanted a website, you had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed.

In a nutshell, here’s how things typically worked in “traditional” web design before WordPress Themes came along: The video below explains how to customise your WordPress.

First, you would discuss your project requirements with a web developer or web designer. Then, the “web design” itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time spent with someone with web design skills going over the layout, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc. of your web site .

Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all of the design elements and scripts coded around the content. All pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along will all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.

Your website will be ready Once everything worked the way it should and looked the way you imagined it to look.

Then, web design “templates” came along. Web templates allow the content to be separated from the presentation in web design. Having ready-made templates helped to speed up the web development process and allowed for mass-production of web documents. This lowered production costs and suited the needs of clients with lower marketing budgets.

As more small businesses began choosing “template-based” websites, templates were developed that offered a number of customization features and options, such as the ability to switch colors, pick styles, rearrange layouts and so on.

As websites and web editor applications evolved, web templates also began evolving into web template “systems”, which controlled all of the visual aspects of a website, i.e. its web design.

Then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new web revolution.

About WordPress Themes

“Themes” take the concept of a web template “system” further.

The “theme” system controls the design aspects of a website and allows you to add a “skin” to your site much like a web template system does, but it also gives you more control over the “look and feel” and presentation of the material on your website.

According to the official WordPress site …

A Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. These files are called template files. It modifies the way the site is displayed, without modifying the underlying software. It may include customized template files, image files (*.jpg, *.gif), style sheets (*.css), custom Pages, as well as any necessary code files (*.php).

(source: WordPress.org)

Because WordPress is Open Source software, it allows professional web designers from all over the world to create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.

This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes are available to users. They are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.

The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives users access to thousands of great themes at no cost …

As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of site owners.

They range from simple, stylish and professional looking, to visually stunning and highly creative designs that would normally cost thousands of dollars to commission, but are surprisingly very inexpensive to buy.

You can view a number of WordPress theme galleries containing stunning examples of some that you can have immediate access to further down the page.

Benefits And Advantages Of Using WordPress Themes

Here are just some of the unique benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:

It has a large and thriving (and growing) community of professional web designers who, collectively, make thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
It gives sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This makes it possible to change themes as often as you like (and hence the “look and feel” of your site) without affecting the content.
Many provide various features and options that allow you to easily customize the theme’s layout and design properties to create a unique look and style to suit your preferences.
Many are are built using a framework that allows you to update your theme to a newer theme version without losing any of your unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
It allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically from your site’s administration interface.
Themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium” WordPress themes are typically very inexpensive.

You can easily install a theme on your site without any web design knowledge required. Simply choose a theme, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design with just a couple of mouse clicks …

With WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get started with any theme you like, and then completely change the look, feel and design of your site in seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!

Responsive WordPress Themes

Many WordPress Theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes.

A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust itself to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms (e.g. computers, tablets, mobile devices) …

A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load a site on different devices without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.

Now that you understand WordPress themes a little better, let’s show you where to find great themes for your website.

Choosing A WordPress Theme For Your Website

To browse thousands of great-looking FREE WordPress themes from the official WordPress Theme Directory, go here: http://www.wordpress.org/extend/themes

If you are looking for “mouth-watering” web design, or professional quality yet highly affordable WordPress web design themes with a distinctive look, unique customizable options and ongoing support, you can search through the theme galleries of the “Premium” theme design agencies listed below:

Solo Stream

Solo Stream provides WordPress users with a selection of high quality professional themes and the option of accessing all through a WordPress theme membership.

(click on the images above to browse more SoloStream themes)

Woo Themes

Woo Themes creates stunning eye-catching themes and offer a membership option that allows you to access all themes in their growing theme collection.

(click on the images above to browse more WooThemes themes)

ThemeForest

ThemeForest allows many professional WordPress theme developers to showcase their designs through their online marketplace. There are well over 7,000 premium themes to choose from (some starting from as little as $1) …

(click on the images above to browse more ThemeForest themes)

Store Front

Store Front specializes in e-commerce themes for WordPress. Their themes integrate well with powerful e-commerce platforms and plugins.

(click on the images above to browse more StoreFront themes)

StudioPress

StudioPress provides WordPress themes based on a framework that allows you to quickly and easily build a professional website that is highly search optimized, and provides auto-updating design architecture, turn-key designs with beautiful frames for your content and unprecedented control of the framework.

One low price entitles you to receive unlimited support and updates, and install your themes on unlimited domains. for more details, click here: StudioPress.

(click on the images above to browse more StudioPress themes)

A word of warning: When choosing FREE themes for your site, we recommend sticking to the ones listed in the official WordPress theme repository.

A number of websites offering “Free” WordPress Themes have sprung up around the web and some of these have been found to be distributing themes containing malicious code. In fact, some of these sites will even come up at the top of Google’s search results for search phrases like “free WordPress themes”. It’s best, therefore, to stick with the official WordPress theme directory, or well known and trusted sites.

If you have any doubts about whether a theme installed on your site may contain potentially malicious or unwanted code, you can use a free WordPress plugin like Theme Authenticity Checker (TAC) to scan your files. This plugin searches the source files of every installed theme on your site for signs of malicious code and presents you with a report as shown in the screenshot below …

Hopefully this information has given you a better understanding of themes and why many people choose WordPress when it comes to building their websites.

WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.

WordPress Features Explained – WordPress Plugins

WordPress Plugins – Adding New Functionality To Your Website

WordPress is a powerful blogging platform because of its ability to add new applications that will enhance the performance of your website.

In WordPress, these applications are called “plugins“.

Watch the video below that shows you how to install plugins.

Typically, adding a new feature to your website or enhancing its functionality involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancement, this cost can be significant, especially if web developers have to create new code or modify programs or scripts to integrate with your existing site.

When setting up a website, businesses will often either spend money upfront buying features that they may or may not need, or pay extra later for new features, enhancements, and/or customizations.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Get your web presence up and running quickly with a simple, easy-to-manage and professional-looking website that communicates exactly what your business is about, and then …

2) As the need arises, easily add new software modules with the click of a mouse button that would integrate seamlessly with your existing website and give your site a whole new range of capabilities and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent extra to download and install on your site?

Well, that’s exactly what plugins allow you to do!

If you own a smartphone, then most likely you are familiar with the concept of the “app”. Apps is like a software program that can be instantly downloaded and installed on your phone to give your phone added functionality. Some apps are free to download, and some apps cost a little money.

plugins are similar to phone apps.

Because WordPress distributes its application as Open Source software and makes its code publicly available, anyone can create, modify and customize any portion of the code to enhance and contribute to the core software application. This has allowed many third-party software developers to create more applications that seamlessly “plug into” the WordPress platform than you can imagine.

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

Plugins let you start off with a basic, simple website and then add new features and enhancements to your site only when required.
Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited functionality to your website easily and inexpensively.
Plugins allow non-technical users to have a website that they can fully manage themselves. Most plugins typically work “out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your site new capabilities, enhancements and functionality. Some plugins are a little more complex and require some initial configuration.

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

Just like themes, thousands of plugins are made available for WordPress users and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that will do just about anything you can imagine.

For example, you can enhance your WordPress site with plugins such as:

Contact forms
Polls and quizzes
Surveys
Rotating banners (promote different products or advertising on your site)
E-commerce (from single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, etc …)
Social media integration
Creating a full scale membership sites
Newsletter subscription forms
Mobile integration
Improve your site’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Image galleries (with rotating images, light boxes, etc.)
Customer testimonials
Instant language translation instantly change your site’s content from English to German)
Statistical report
Custom navigation
Customer interactivity
Media integration
Faster page loading
Event management
Business directories
Automatically sell advertising on your site
Set client appointments and reminders
Help customers make reservations and bookings
Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you a report
Redirect visitors from certain pages to other pages or other websites
Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
Make your page printable or downloadable as a PDF file
Exclude pages from showing on your site
Protect / hide content on your pages
Migrate / Import data from different publishing platforms
Search and replace data
Prevent SPAM
Custom visitor commenting (display Facebook comments)
Insert code and elements into your pages
Add code to your site’s header or footer
Add tables
Add graphic elements
Provide advanced text formatting options
Add/Create QR codes
Improve your local search listings on Google
Add a map of your business location
Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others
Show countdown timers (for expiring special offers, coupons, etc …)
Add coupons and special offers
Display personal (and personalized) greetings
And hundreds of other features!

As you can see, the possibilities of what you can do with a WordPress site are just about endless when you add plugins.

If you need to protect your content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with separate login details for every member …

You can use free plugins to enhance your site in so many ways. From adding new features that will improve the “user experience” of your site …

To extend your site’s reach across social media networks and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your site using inexpensive Premium (i.e. paid) plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that automate the process of managing customer testimonials and booking events on your site …

And even run a complete bookings and reservation system on your site, all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to create these applications for you …

You can take advantage of the WordPress built-in commenting features and add plugins that will make your site even more interactive and allow you to better engage with your visitors, customers and registered users / members. …

For example, visitors on your site can:

Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using WordPress built-in comments, or Facebook comments (which get shared throughout the visitor’s Facebook pages giving your site additional exposure).
Share and bookmark your content with other online users on all major social networking and social bookmarking sites.
Contact you via contact forms
Engage in online discussions with you and other customers / members of your site through forums
Engage via live chats (text and video/audio)
Call your business directly from a mobile phone while visiting your site
Open support tickets via a customer support helpdesk
And so much more …

You can even integrate complex “Back End” third party applications and solutions with a WordPress “Front End” site. This allows you to manage the marketing content that your visitors see on your site, while your third-party applications handle the “business” end without visitors leaving your site …

Plugins – Some Useful Tips

There are many WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this can start to affect your site’s performance and loading times. It also means more maintenance and more possibilities of conflicts and errors arising.
Only keep the plugins you really need and use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site.
Free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin developer. Even when choosing paid plugins, check around to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, etc.
If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before downloading it or continuing to use it.
Always keep your plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugins can cause errors and may have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious users.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important feature of WordPress.

Hopefully this information has given you a better understanding of plugins what they are and how they can significantly enhance the functionality of your WordPress site or blog.

We provide detailed step-by-step tutorials on how to use WordPress plugins and how to configure many of the most popular and useful WordPress plugins.

Can WordPress Fix Website Design issues?

Are you losing business because your website was badly designed? Learn the simplest and most inexpensive way to repair site design problems.

In this article we’ll show you the simplest and most inexpensive way to fix issues with your website.

Are you losing business because of a poorly-designed web site? A poorly-designed web site can end up costing you valuable business.

In a world where beautiful design matters, the design of your web site is very important to the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that a web visitor see and this can influence their decision to buy your products and use your services.

We mostly do it online. Even if it’s just preliminary research, we may fire up our laptop and go visit a website before taking the next step.

Now, put yourself in your customer’s position. How does your web site appear to other people? Does your site invite them to enter and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and cautious about what to do next?

The way your site looks is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other things than can influence your visitors’ experience and their decision to ultimately proceed.

Let’s take a look at a few key design problems that can affect your web site:

Website Design Issues

Typical design issues that can impact your user’s perception about your site include:

Colour – Poor colour combinations can affect your website’s results. This also applies to text and background colour. There are tools that can help you select web colours correctly and even safe web colour tools to ensure that the colours you select will display correctly across various systems. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically unappealing, outdated and just plain old ugly graphic elements can result in users quickly losing interest. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic elements or excessive use of design elements.
Layout – How your site is structured can have a significant impact in the way visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigational items, links and other useful objects.
Responsiveness – As online information is now viewed through various devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s important that your web design is responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to display your information on all devices, browsers and platforms, you will incur significant loss of customers.

Website Functionality Issues

Common website functionality problems include:

Sub par functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a page where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics aren’t showing. Sub par functionality is not acceptable for a website, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your website reflects your organisation. It’s important to make sure that all your links, videos and images remain up and running all the time. In some cases, these problems are related to factors such as your hosting, or they may even be unknown to you, but it’s important to ensure that you’re always proactive and that all issues get corrected as soon as possible.
Feature limitations – If your site offers visitors certain functionality, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell products online, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a cart, enter discount coupons, pay using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Invariably, where your business suffers most noticeably due to a poorly-constructed website is in the realm of the “user experience”.

A bad user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead them to vent their disappointment in social networks, user forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you negative publicity.

Here are just some common issues that can lead to a poor user experience:

Ease Of Use – Your website needs to be easy to use and easy to navigate. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. Your site visitors want user-friendly features and want to find things quickly and without disappointment. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable files to your site (e.g. presentation slides), make sure that users are given instructions about how to download and access your information.
Organisation – If your site isn’t organised and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective buyers but also existing customers. Providing features such as descriptive URLs, product and service categories and clearly-defined sections where topic-related content can be easily found provides users with a good user experience.
Stimulating Features – Customers stay longer on sites that are user friendly, well organised, and that provide them with eye-catching options. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your visitors. For example, highlight hyperlinks which point to your product pages with eye-popping images alongside well-crafted product descriptions. This is effective and can help you improve not only the user experience on your website, but also grow your sales and conversions.
User Interactivity – Another area that helps customers decide to stick around on your website is to provide interactive features that engage your users, like features that let users comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your support staff via a responsive help desk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want visitors to navigate quickly within your site and access your data without waiting around for pages to load, so site loading optimisation is important.
Compliance – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your potential clients that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages such as business information page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of use, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.

As the above shows, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business results online. If your site is poorly built, you run the serious risk of not only losing potential paying customers, but also existing clients as well.

What if you found this post because you currently have an existing website with design problems that are affecting your business?

First, understand that getting problems addressed on an existing site can take some time and can also be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you own, especially if what needs doing requires rewriting code extensively.

If you are considering getting a new website built or overhauling an existing web site, then we suggest that you consider choosing the WordPress content publishing platform.

We currently publish more in-depth posts about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few of the things to keep in mind about why you should seriously choose WordPress:

WordPress – Unique Web Design Features

WP themes are unique web design template systems that let you easily modify the look of your entire website in minutes.

There are thousands of great-looking themes for WordPress site owners available that can be downloaded. Many of these are either freely available, or they can be bought for a relatively small price, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website design.

Most WordPress themes nowadays are responsive and provide users with a flexible and customization options for changing design settings on your site like colour, template elements like headers, footers, menus and styles, page layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that helps your business.

WP Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Scalability

Another great reason to choose WordPress is that WordPress provides users with modular features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WP plugins, like WordPress themes, integrate easily with your website to provide you with virtually unlimited new functionality.

Earlier in this post we looked at issues in areas like sub par functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built website could cost you customers.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite inexpensively. If there is a functionality that needs to be integrated with your website, just install a WordPress plugin that will do what you want your site to do.

If you want a plugin that will notify you about any issues detected on your website, such as links not working, videos not playing, images that are missing or even tell you if your entire website has gone down? No problems there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can correct these immediately!

If you want a plugin that will turn your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce solution? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive and easy-to-use plugins that will help you sell products on your site and provide your visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add items to a shopping cart, use discounts, purchase using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are tens of thousands of great plugins designed for WordPress that can be easily downloaded and are freely available, or are extremely well priced and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

WordPress – An Interactive Web User Experience

In addition to being able to correct problems caused by a poorly-built website, WordPress can also help you provide website users with a great user experience.

WordPress provides beautiful, professional and exciting themes that cover all needs and applications and plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress site, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very rich and engaging user experience that will keep them coming back for more.

As stated earlier, consumers nowadays do research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, these consumers will not return and simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website.

Hopefully now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website Design and how WordPress can help you build a better online presence. To learn more about the benefits of using the WP website publishing platform, please see our related posts section.

Have we helped you become a more productive WordPress user? Feel free to comment below or take a moment to share this information with your friends.

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Disclaimer This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WordPress products written about on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. The product details used in this review have been supplied from the plugin’s website and/or from sites that provide Premium WordPress Services

Understanding the Benefits of WordPress Plugins

One of the main advantages of choosing WordPress is the ability to easily expand your WordPress site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

Do you use WordPress for business? Learn what plugins are and how you can use these to expand your site’s functionality.

Understanding the Benefits of WordPress Plugins

One of the main features of the WordPress software is that you can easily enhance your WP site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

About Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

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

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

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

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

Typically, adding a new feature to an already-built site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancement, things can become fairly expensive, particularly if website developers have to create new code or modify code or install scripts that integrate into your current site.

This also applies to creating a new website. Companies often spend up front on bells and whistles they may simply not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend a modular approach when growing a website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a web presence up and running fast, then…

2) As new features are required, add new software modules with a few mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your existing website or blog, to give your web site an entirely new range of practical functionality, and…

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

Well, that’s precisely what WordPress plugins allow you to do!

Benefits Of Using WP Plugins

We started this article by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, many plugins can be installed on your sites.

Plugins that cost money are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare this to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. “Paid”) plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, modify and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of professional web development companies to enhance the WP software.

WP plugins allow you to get started simply with a basic web site and then add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
WP plugins let you add almost unlimited functionality to your website easily, quickly and cheaply.
WP plugins give you virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
WP plugins allow anyone to have a website that they can manage themselves.
Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site instant new enhancements and features.
Some plugins can be slightly more advanced and could require some configuring.

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

Like WordPress themes, thousands of plugins are available to WordPress users… Often at no cost!

You can access thousands of WordPress plugins from the Free WP Plugin Repository…

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that can do just about anything you could possibly need a site to do.

WP plugin categories cover:

Web Site Administration
Content Management
Online Traffic Generation
User Engagement
Social Media
Media Utilities Automation
Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
Data Monitoring & Reporting
Web Site SEO

You can expand a WP site with plugins such as:

Contact forms
Quizzes and polls
Social contests
Rotating advertising banners
E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc.…)
Social sharing buttons
Membership sites
Newsletter opt-in forms
Sales workflow
Mobile conversion
Improving your site’s SEO
Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
User feedback 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 interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
Cloud storage integration
Faster page loading
Event management
Niche directories
Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
Set appointments and appointment reminders
Automate reservations and bookings
Detect broken hyperlinks and email you the reports
Redirect website pages
Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
Make pages available for your printing or downloading as PDF
Add a site map
Hide specific from displaying in areas of your site (e.g. Sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
Hide content on your pages and posts
Migrate content from non-WordPress applications
Search and replace content
Block SPAM commenting
Customize guest comment displays (e.g. Displaying Facebook posts)
Inserting HTML and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
Add formatted tables
Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
Add and manage QR codes
Improve your local search listings on Google
Add location maps
Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc….)
Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc….
And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website for your business, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one built on your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by installing a plugin on your website.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can use plugins to make an area of a post inaccessible, or create a full membership site with separate login details for users…

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your web presence in lots of ways. From installing features that will enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to review visitor metrics …

To increase your business visibility across social media and search engines…

You can also add complex features to your site using relatively inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your site like a customer testimonial and event bookings management…

And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system online… All for a small fraction of the cost of paying web developers to create custom functionality for you…

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive…

For example, your web visitors can easily:

Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
Contact you using contact forms
Engage in online discussions with your team members through online forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
Engage with members of your team via live webcam conferencing and chat room facilities
Call your business from their mobile phones while browsing your pages
Open a support ticket
And so much more…

You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise applications with a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical aspects…

Some Useful Things You Should Know About Plugins

There are many plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will inevitably start to affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It can also create more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential conflicts.
Install only those plugins you really need to use. Delete all deactivated plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish here for additional information.
If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. Two years), then think twice before using it on your site. WordPress is updated often and older plugins can create issues.
Ensure to always maintain your plugins updated. Older plugins not only can create errors, they could also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

If there is any feature you want 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 will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost will be quite reasonable.

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin is not available, then one can probably be created for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully this post has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can enhance the functionality of your web site. See our published posts to learn more about using WordPress plugins.

Want more help with WordPress? Please tell us what you think below and feel free to share this article with your friends.

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Disclaimer: This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WP products reviewed on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. The product images and information on this page have been supplied from the plugin’s own website and sites that provide Premium WordPress Services

Add Currency Conversion To Your WordPress Website

Currency conversion software tools let your prospects have the cost of an international currency transaction translated into their home currency at the point of sale.

Currencyr is a free WP tool that lets your visitors translate international transaction amounts into their local currency.

Need currency conversion for your WordPress website? Learn about Currencyr, a simple and easy-to-install WordPress tool for your WordPress website that lets your customers convert foreign currency amounts into their local currency.

Do you sell products online globally? If so, then it’s a great idea to consider providing your prospects with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce web site.

Currency conversion software tools let your customers have the price of an international currency transaction translated to their home currency when purchasing or checking out products online. It also lets visitors and customers view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.

The obvious advantage of displaying currency conversion on your site is that it lets visitors see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.

If your site is built using WordPress, it’s simple to add currency conversion via a plugin to your WordPress website or blog, allowing your visitors to quickly understand the cost of your goods.

Currencyr

Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your website or blog.

The Currencyr useful plugin includes features like the following:

In-line converter
Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
Currency table and converter widget
Can be integrated with a number of e-store plugins like WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
Can determine local currency automatically
Full support for language translations

Important: This plugin requires your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Ask your web host to upgrade your PHP.

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You can install the plugin from your WP admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” â€¦

After the plugin has been installed and activated, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WordPress administration area â€¦

This takes you to the plugin settings screen â€¦

For example, you can select your base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu. The default base currency is ‘United States Dollar’ …

Similarly, you can choose a data provider from a dropdown menu. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can choose one of the other options, such as European Central Bank or Google Finance …

Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …

You can select how frequently you want to update the currency exchange rates by choosing an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …

The plugin uses jQuery, which is an open-source library of Javascript code that lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (like WP plugins).

Unless there is a reason to modify the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …

Configure the rest of the settings according to your own needs and click ‘Save Changes’ when finished …

When you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can add currency conversion to your WP site’s pages and posts using shortcodes and widgets.

See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.

How To Use Currencyr Shortcodes

You can easily add currency conversion to pages, posts and widgets with no technical knowledge or skills using shortcodes.

Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WordPress pages and posts:

Let’s say that you are selling goods for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to display the amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.

To do this, you will need to add the shortcode below into your page content …

Note: You can also insert amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 155.25, 79.45, 544.97, etc …)

The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode should look once you have added it to your post …

After publishing the page, your currency conversion will then display like this …

Using this example, let’s also translate the same amount into multiple currencies.

To do this, use the shortcode shown below (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …

You can see how the shortcode appears when added to a page …

Once the post or page has been published, your converted currency will then appear as you can see in the example below …

refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with this plugin.

Now, let’s say that you would like to select a different base currency than the one selected as the default.

For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …

The screenshot below shows how the shortcode looks when inserted into your content …

After publishing your content, the converted currency will then display as you can see below …

How To Use The Currencyr Widget

You can also insert currency conversion into your site’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.

To add the currency converter to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in your WP admin menu …

In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …

Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …

The currency conversion tool will now appear on your site’s sidebar menu with the settings you have specified …

Additional Plugin Notes

Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the Currencyr plugin.

Currency Separator

The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using several currencies.

You can select a different symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.

So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …

Separates all your currency values using the forward slash as you can see in the example below …

If you modify the symbol and resave your settings …

Your web visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …

e-Commerce Platform Integration

As stated earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …

(image source: plugin site)

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Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce site.

Have you found this tutorial helpful? Feel free to add your comments below or subscribe to our newsletter and get notified about practical online business tips, news and WordPress tutorials.

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Disclaimer: We are not associated with WordPress or any of the WP products reviewed on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. All images on this page have been supplied from the plugin’s website and websites that provide Premium WP Services

How To Add Tags To posts in WordPress

How To Add Tags To WordPress Posts: One of the main things you want to keep in mind when using a website or blog as a communication tool for your business, is to make sure that users can find what they are looking for on your site quickly and easily, and that search engines can find and index your pages for relevant searches and search results.

This is where Tags can help you. They can be useful for letting users find what they are looking for and for letting search engines know what your content is about.

In this how to add tags to WordPress Posts tutorial you are going to learn what they are, how they can help WordPress users, and how to use them in your posts to improve user experience and search engine indexing.

Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about using tags in your WordPress posts …

Tags – What Are They And How Can They Help You?

It’s a keyword that provides a useful reference for visitors and search engines. They are essentially words or short two to three word keyword phrases that help describe what your posts and pages are really about.

They are accurately representing your posts or pages can help to increase traffic by allowing search engines to gain a better understanding of how relevant your site is to specific topics, and assist visitors in navigating through your content to related topics on your site.

They also need to be used and managed correctly, however, as “over-tagging” posts and pages can dilute its effectiveness as a navigation and search engine indexing tool. Adding too many tags is the equivalent of “keyword-stuffing”, which search engines like Google not only frown upon, but have long been penalizing sites for.

How To Add Tags To posts in WordPress

Tags Vs Categories

They should not be confused with categories. They are similar to a Category, but it’s smaller in scope. While a post may be filed under a single category, it may be referenced using several tags.

A popular definition used by taxonomy experts to help people understand what tags are and how they differ from categories, is to think of categories as your site’s table of contents, and tags as your site’s index words.

An easier way to remember the difference is that the Categories of your posts won’t change often, but your Tags will probably change with every new Post you make.

A good example of this, which is often used to help users understand the difference, is to imagine that you own a recipes website. You could “categorize” your recipes by meal type (e.g. breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, etc) or by cuisine (e.g. Italian, Chinese, French, etc), which would help give your visitors a broad starting point for finding information on your site, and then use tags to help group your individual posts containing recipes along similar main ingredients (e.g. “chicken”, “fish”, “vegan”, “gluten-free”, etc).

This way, having a “chicken” or “chicken recipe” tag on chicken-based recipes linked to all other chicken recipe posts on your site, would be very helpful if your readers come across a great chicken dinner dish recipe on your site, and are then interested in finding more chicken recipes that you have published across different meal types or cuisines.

So, in the screenshot below taken from an actual WordPress-powered recipe blog found online, if you click on the “Chicken” tag at the end of one delicious chicken recipe …

You will be taken to a resource page on that blog listing all of their other chicken recipes …

The “chicken recipe” example above shows you how tags can be a useful navigation aid, and how they can also lead to increased engagement on your site, by making it easier for your site users or blog readers to locate the exact type of content that they are interested in.

How To Add Tags To posts in WordPress

When To Use Tags

Preferably, you should only use tags if you believe these will add value to your site’s navigation for users, or if you think it will help give search engines more “context” to work with when trying to determine how relevant the pages and posts of your site are to a specific topic.

If you already have a good navigation menu on your site, a list of categories on your sidebar and a search box prominently displayed, using tags may not be as important to your users in terms of navigation.

Keep in mind that there is no real downside to using tags if you choose your tags wisely, feel that it will benefit your users, and believe that it will have a positive impact on your search rankings.

They should be used sparingly and efficiently. Each tag you use should be short (no more than two or three words) and highly relevant to the content in your post.

Ideally, it’s recommended that you add no more than around five tags to your posts. Think about what the focus of your site is really all about, then think about the five keywords or keyword phrases that best describe what your post is about in the context of your site’s purpose and use these keywords as your tags.

Using the recipe blog from our previous example, you can see in the screenshot below that the blog owner has identified the five keywords that she believes best represents her post on “Southeast Asian Chicken Wings Recipe” and used these for contextually tagging her content …

Your tags should relate directly to the subject matter addressed in your post. Many SEO experts advise not to include keywords that appear in your content, but that are not relevant enough to warrant tagging.

Additionally, if a tag is only used a few times throughout your entire site’s body of content, there is little point in using it, as this indicates that the term is not particularly relevant to your site or blog as a whole. Likewise, if almost all of your posts use the same tag, then that particular tag is probably too general to be of any real value to users, as clicking on it will only bring up a list of posts that will probably comprise of almost your entire site.

When thinking about which tags to use, put yourself in the shoes of your ideal site visitor or blog reader and ask yourself for every tag you come up with if you would be compelled to click on it after coming to end of the post if you were interested in reading more about that topic on your site. If the answer is “yes” that is probably a useful tag to include. If not, don’t bother.

How To Add Tags To posts in WordPress: Step-By-Step Tutorial

To add tags to your posts, create a new post or edit an existing one, then locate the Tags Box in the sidebar section of your Create / Edit Post screen …

Note: If you can’t see the Tags box displayed in your screen, click on the Screen Options tab on the top right-hand corner of your screen …

And make sure that the “Tags” checkbox is ticked in the Show on screen section …

Enter your tag into the Tags box and click the Add button…

You can also add multiple tags to your post by typing or pasting them, separated with commas into the tag text field …

As you begin typing in your tag, an auto-complete list appears, allowing you to select from existing ones on your site to add to your post …

Additionally, you can click on Choose from the most used tags link and add them to your post by selecting them from the tag cloud that appears below the link…

To delete any unwanted ones, click on the little delete icon next to the tag…

You can also manage your post tags from the Quick Edit section of your Posts screen…

Once your post has been published or updated, your tags will display to visitors in a Tag Cloud in your sidebar (if you have configured your sidebar to display a Tag Cloud widget) …

“Tag clouds” may be configured in some themes to show how they are used throughout your blog in various sizes, colours, etc. This allows people to get a better perspective at a glance of what your site is really about…

Clicking on any Tag in the Tag Cloud …

Brings up a list of all posts that have been tagged with the same tag …

Editing WordPress Tags

If you are consistently posting content to your site using tags, you may end up with a bloated list after a while. If you need to edit or manage your tags, you can do so by going to Posts > Tags …

This will bring you to the Tags screen, which contains a list of all your tags and allows you to perform a number of management tasks, such as adding, editing and deleting single and multiple ones …

For more information about using the Tags screen, see this tutorial: How To Add, Edit And Delete Tags In WordPress

WordPress Plugins Related To Tags

There are a number of WordPress plugins that can help you when it comes to using and managing your WordPress Tags. For more details, see this tutorial: WordPress Plugins For Managing WordPress Tags

Congratulations! Now you know how to use tags in your WordPress posts.

WordPress Currency Conversion for your Convenience – Plugin

WordPress Currency Conversion – Plugin

The Conversion software tools let your prospects have the cost of an international currency transaction translated into their home currency at the point of sale.

It’s a free WP tool that lets your visitors translate international transaction amounts into their local currency.

Do you need a conversion for your WordPress website? Learn about conversion, a simple and easy-to-install WordPress tool for your WP website that lets your customers convert foreign amounts into their local currency.

Do you sell products online globally? If so, then it’s a great idea to consider providing your prospects with the convenience of conversion on your e-commerce web site.

The conversion software tools let your customers have the price of an international transaction translated to their home currency when purchasing or checking out products on line. It allows visitors and customers view the exact amount their card or Pay Pal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.

The obvious advantage of displaying conversion on your site is that it lets visitors see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local one, making it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.

If your site is built using WordPress, it’s simple to add the conversion via a plugin to your WP website or blog, allowing your visitors to quickly understand the cost of your goods.

This is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your website or blog.

The useful plugin includes features like the following:

In-line converter
Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
Currency table and converter widget
Can be integrated with a number of e-store plugins like WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
Can determine local currency automatically
Full support for language translations

WordPress Currency Conversion – Plugin

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You can install the plugin from your WP admin area by typing in “currency” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” â€¦

After the plugin has been installed and activated, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing a currency from your WordPress administration area â€¦

This takes you to the plugin settings screen â€¦

For example, you can select your base from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu. The default base is ‘United States Dollar’ …

WordPress Plugin Currency Conversion

WP Plugin Currency Conversion

Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …

You can select how frequently you want to update the exchange rates by choosing an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …

WP Plugin Currency Conversion

The plugin uses jQuery, which is an open-source library of Javascript code that lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (like WP plugins).

Unless there is a reason to modify the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …

Configure the rest of the settings according to your own needs and click ‘Save Changes’ when finished …

When you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can add the conversion to your WP site’s pages and posts using shortcodes and widgets.

WP Plugin Currency Conversion

See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.