WordPress was built for blogging but also designed to be extensible through plugins and themes. Developers have taken that extensible core and run with it, creating extensions that turn WordPress into a full-featured shopping site, social network, online directory and so much more. Here are some of the most notable, popular and powerful ones.
Have an idea for a new social network? Add BuddyPress on top of WordPress and you'll get a full-featured social network totally free. Build the network the way you want with this highly configurable plugin.
Create your own Q&A site through WordPress, just like Quora or Stackoverflow. AnsPress is a seriously high-powered solution that looks great, offers much more than just typical Q&A features and best of all, is free and open-source.
Got clients and need to accept payments from them? WP-Invoice integrates with your WordPress site to let you do it all from there. Just create an invoice and your client gets an email with a link to view and pay it.
If you've got a WordPress user base you need to keep track of, why not use WordPress to do it? WP-CRM is an extensible customer relationship management solution built to work with your existing user database.
Run a job board on your WP site! WPJobBoard is an encompassing solution that integrates with any standard theme and provides great looking resumes and listings. All those built-in features make it worth the premium cost.
Maybe you'd like to start up a forum for a community you have in mind? With a long history dating back to the earliest days of WordPress, bbPress stands as a great choice. It's extremely powerful and totally free.
Got something to sell on the net? WooCommerce has you covered with power and ease of use that have earned it a prime spot in the heart of the WordPress community.
This full featured membership solution lets you sell access to your content through memberships. Its main strength is integration with the popular WooCommerce plugin to provide a more comfortable experience for the many people relying on that powerhouse solution.
Your content is valuable and maybe you're looking to charge for access but don't want a bulky membership solution. Pay Per View is simple and fast and integrates with PayPal to let you charge a one-time fee or a subscription for users to view key content.
Accept appointments from clients or run a full fledged hotel booking system right through WordPress. Booking Calendar offers a powerful solution with tons of advanced features available at a premium.
Run your real estate empire through WordPress with the powerful and hugely extensible WPL and commercial version, Realtyna WPL Pro. The free version gets you started and helps you decide if you need the premium features.
WordPress Chat makes it possible to run your own chat rooms through WordPress. It's a self-hosted solution so no monthly fees are required apart from the server used to host your WordPress.
Gravity Forms is more than just an intuitive form builder. The higher premium version adds powerful features like MailChimp and Aweber integration to add users to campaign lists, and PayPal integration to let you charge users for things like registering an account on your site and for having the ability to create posts. It really is an encompassing solution that lets you do tons of fascinating things through WordPress.
Pods is an impressive extension of WordPress as a CMS, it provides an easy way to manage custom fields and content types through an easy to use back-end UI, and a framework for developers to easily extend that functionality. With that type of content power, you can build comprehensive directories, coupon sites, even alternative app lists!
Run a discussion group through WordPress similar to listserv. It will let your users communicate directly through email notifications, no need for them to login at your site.
A boon for photographers using WordPress, Photography Management provides a simple, integrated solution for client galleries and proofing. Provide clients with a gallery link and they can easily download and favorite the images they love, and you'll get a downloadable list of those favorites to get them printed.
A little known fact, WordPress lets you run a network of sites just like at WordPress.com. Simply enable the option and users can create a site on your WordPress network. Pro Sites lets you charge them for that site!
As of version 4.5, WordPress Multi-site lets users map a domain name to their site on the network. Domain Mapping takes that a step further when used with Pro Sites, letting you charge users for that feature.
