WordPress CMS Introduction & 5 Free WPlugins for Business Websites

WordPress is a massive part of the ever-growing internet world. So, to help out all the professionals interested in this domain, we’ve mentioned everything one needs to know about WordPress, WordPress Plugins, and how to make the most out of whatever you’re doing.

Before anything else, we need to know what exactly WordPress is?
In a common person’s language, you can describe it as the simplest and most popular way to create your own website or blog. Popular to the effect that WordPress powers one out of every four websites you visit.

For a more technical outlay, WordPress is an open-source content management system that democratizes the WordPress software’s free usage. Further, the system makes it possible for people with 0 programming knowledge to manage various essential aspects of their website.

To ascertain the power of WordPress, consider the fact that the official Whitehouse.gov website and blogs of several companies, including Microsoft, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, Sony, Facebook, Disney, Target, and The New York Times, are powered by WordPress.

Now that you know who our superhero or protagonist is, it’s time to introduce you to its right hand- The WordPress Plugins.

Plugins are software pieces containing functions that increment the functionality of a WordPress website. Written in the PHP programming language, plugins make it incredibly convenient, easy, and cheap to make everything on your website better.

There’s a Plugin for everything – Why is WordPress Plugin essential?

Today, thousands of free and premium WordPress Plugins are available at
WordPress.org, and you can install/uninstall them from the admin area. In addition, third-party companies, developers, and agencies (like us) travel the extra mile to make this upgrade unbelievably seamless for you.

If WordPress is your smartphone, Plugins are the applications you install.

WordPress was primarily started as a tool to create blogs or traditional websites. But today, it has evolved into a colossal content management system and application framework, thanks to the massive ecosystem of Plugins.

Choosing the perfect ones for your website is quintessential. Usually, free ones do not come with tech support. They also vary in quality, and it is advised to get the most updated version, which is also compatible with the latest version of WordPress. A market scare is also there about Plugins slowing down your site. Well, let us lift up the veil from this myth. All Plugins don’t slow down your website; only the bad ones do.

According to Greg Goodman, founder of GoodmanCreatives.com, “when choosing plugins, be sure to check how the page speed changes with each one. For instance, Gravity Forms (a highly popular forms plugin) can greatly slow down an entire website – even if there is no form on the page. In a world where Google and your visitors care deeply about a fast loading website design, make sure to test everything.”

You might be wondering, “Okay, Plugins help increase the efficiency of a website, but why should I spend money on them? What makes them so worthy? Can I not make my blog work without them?”

Well, let’s answer this query of yours in this section.

WordPress Plugins offer many benefits, including but not limited to:

1. They turn your imagination turn features:
There are over 54,000 Plugins that cater to all your needs, from making your content SEO-friendly to adding live chat. They can make small changes (like adding an image to the sidebar) and prominent ones (like adding an online payment option) without any technical requirement.

Do you want to do something with your website? We can make a Plugin for it.

2. Say Hello to new changes:
It is practically impossible to determine all your future feature requirements while building your website primarily because the business environment is dynamic and ever-changing. For example, if you made your website 10 years ago, adding online payments would’ve been a distant idea. But today, this feature gets counted in the basics. The most significant benefit you enjoy here is that with WordPress Plugins, you don’t need to overhaul your website completely.

3. Become newer in cheaper:
Hiring a developer to add new features can put a huge burden on your pocket. But why worry when you have WordPress Plugins which can get you everything the developer can, but at cheaper costs. Getting even the premium ones turns out to be relatively cheaper than the development costs you’d have to spend for a new one.

4. Ensure results beforehand:
A developer working on adding functionalities can be taxing to predict the results. There are adroit developers as well as less skilled ones, so you could face a challenge in deciding whom to hire for the job. That’s where plugins come to the rescue. They are easy to evaluate and cheaper to experiment with. Moreover, not getting involved in the cumbersome and time-demanding process of hiring and working with a developer will save an enormous chunk of your time and effort.

5. Save time
After identifying the plugins, you need, it’s just a few minutes before you add that feature to your website. All you need to do is install and activate the Plugin.

There are a lot of plugins in the market, but obviously, some of them are more useful than others. So, if you’re wondering which plugins are the best, you’re at the right place. Below is a list of a few popular plugins you should know about.

1. Yoast SEO: It is used by WordPress bloggers or site owners. This plugin works on improving the overall SEO score by setting the main keyword, meta description, and title, among many others. Not to forget, it offers stats and actionable advice to make everything better.

2. Contact Form 7: This is again one of the simplest and most effective plugins when it comes to organizing data. We all look for an easy way to connect with people, making this Contact Form 7 hugely popular and thus, a part of this list. It can manage multiple contact forms, integrate spam filtering and customize the design of the form. This is one of the most downloaded plugins for the ‘Contact Us’ pages.

We, at cmsMinds, have built an add-on to Contact Form 7 Plugin, which is known as Pay with Contact form 7.

We’ve made it super easy for you to add separate PayPal settings in each contact form. Integrating the form with PayPal would send an email and auto-redirect to PayPal.

The reason why you should choose cmsMinds’ Contact Form 7 + Paypal Plugin is:

• You can receive payments from donors or users within a concise period of time.
• It can be simply set up with minimal information settings.
• You can also track payments received since the back-end uses Contact Form 7 to monitor the submissions.
• You get access to future payment gateways that will be integrated soon.
• It allows settings where a client can set PayPal mode, currency, language.
• You can easily set item names, prices on a contact form.
• You can also create a form like a sell item with ‘fixed price’ or create a form like ‘donation’ where a user can add an amount for donation.
• It gives you the option to add a successful payment URL and a cancel payment URL.
• The plugin will save & list all the data of contact form 7 and PayPal payment details.

3. Jetpack: It is a multipurpose tool that helps you with marketing, design, and security. The most astonishing of its features constitute of site analytics, spam filtering, automated social media posting, downtime monitoring, lazy image loading, CDN, and more.

4. WooCommerce: We’re sure you didn’t miss out on e-commerce when talking about WordPress Plugins. WooCommerce, as the name suggests, lets you turn your WordPress site into an e-commerce platform. It’s very flexible when it comes to customization.
CMS minds are there again to make your life a little simpler.

While these are General Plugins that can be used for websites/ businesses, we have built one plugin specifically for the Boat Rental Business.

5. Our Boat Rental Plugin for WordPress integrates with WordPress and WooCommerce. It is a simple-to-use Plugin that enables your watercraft business to rent boats online, making booking boats for your website visitors a breeze. The robust basic version of the Plugin is totally FREE as well.

WP Boat Rental Plugin allows marina owners to enable their customers to book online. In just a few minutes, you’ll be up and running. You can add boats (all the different types), manage your bookings, and create boat bookings and calendars. This reservation system can be simply customized to meet your specific requirements. It’s powerful to accept payment and security deposits as well.

In a nutshell, it’s a complete reservation system for your business.

Reason why you should choose the WP Boat Rental Plugin are:

• You can add boats as inventory and list them on the advanced search page offered by the Plugin.
• Efficiently manage multiple reservations in a single order.
• You get the option to collect security deposits per reservation item.
• It makes displaying available dates in your booking calendar seamless, and available dates are shown with the help of a widget.
• You can attract more customers since a quick view is available to make instant bookings.
• It ensures greater customer satisfaction as they can post requests to cancel their reservations, edit their reservations, download reservation invoices, and sync their Google/iCalendars based on the reservations.

Conclusion:

Now that you know everything about WordPress, Plugins, and their best uses, all you need to do is find the appropriate one for yourself or hire us to build a custom plugin fit for your website. Call us today.

If you are interested in learning more about some of the same technologies, read the following articles:

Security As The First Priority For Website Development

Top 10 Simple Tips To Secure WordPress Site