As with all my WordPress articles you will find they are written in a plain English, easy to understand way so that regardless of anyone’s expertise level you will always understand them and this article “how to use Plugins” is no exception.
A Quick Background
A Plugin or PLG for short is really like an add on that you can use with your WordPress blog so that you create a more enhanced, more exciting, user friendly blog. There normally free and very easy to use, in fact the only work you need do is really installing them.
In a nutshell they make your blogging experience a lot more fruitful and so too your readers.
There are literally thousands of PLG’s that are available to use right now either within your WordPress admin panel or out there in Google land.
An example of one would be to make your blog more search engine friendly or to link your blog to Facebook. Perhaps you want to have a photo album on your blog or you want to do stuff with videos or stop people stealing your posts. A Plugin will allow you to do these things and a whole lot more and without you ever having to know the technical side of it, just install one and play.
How Do We Install One
Well first thing you need do is decide what you actually want one for. On my site for instance I have PLG’s for Twitter and Facebook plus other social sites with nice looking buttons that people can click. I have ones that let me choose where certain posts or articles will appear. I also have one that lets Google find my site and list it for higher search ranking. So decide first what it is your trying to achieve.
Log In
Now log into you WordPress admin panel and scroll down the far let column under Dashboard until you see Plugins. Click the Add New where you will be presented with the chance to search. You can either do 1 or 2 things here. Either look in the large search box to see if any of the keywords are similar to what you are looking to do, if so click on that word and see what becomes available. If you see something that matches what you want to do then simply click the install button in the box of the one you have chosen and once installed click the activate button. The PLG is now on your blog and ready to use.
If however there is nothing in the large search box to match your ideas then try putting a relevant word in the small search box above. If you see something to match your wants then as before simply install and activate.
Still Not Found The Right One
Even though WordPress has many many plugins within the admin panel it can be quite common still not to find the right one. In this case we just have to widen our search horizons by using an engine such as Google or Yahoo to find the correct one. Admittedly this way takes a little bit longer but its hardly a killer.
Again type in what your looking for in the Google box and see what results appear then go to a page that looks good, see if its the type of PLG you want then download it. There is normally a big download button for easy installation on these pages.
NB: Now remember where your downloading it to on your computer. I tend to create a separate file on my desktop just for this purpose just to keep things nice and clean. To create a special file simply go to your computers home page (Desk Top), the one where you see all the icons when you start your computer. Now right click your mouse then click on New then click on Folder at the top. Rename it something your remember, you have now created a new folder.
So download the Plugin and choose to store it into your new folder, once this is done go to your WordPress admin panel/Dashboard, go to Add New in the Plugin section on the left hand column and click. What you will do now is click on the Upload link (in blue) at the top of the page then hit browse. Go to the new file you created with the download in ( this will be located in Desk Top). Double click on the link in this file. You should now see this in the browse box of your admin panel, click install now and then activate. There we are done. Took a little bit longer but I am sure it did not hurt.
Using your newly Activated Plugin.
It really depends on the type you have installed in regards to what you do now. Some such as Google Site Map (helps Google find your blog) require no touching at all but others may need you to put in information manually. To be honest there pretty self explanatory. If you have one that needs placing somewhere on your blog like social media buttons then obviously your going to have to decide where there to go.
Generally you will find any PLG’s, that require additional input, to be under the settings tab which is at the very bottom of your Dashboard panel on the left hand side. You will then see the name of your Plugin, just click on that and follow the instructions.
In others you may see them when writing new posts or building new pages. They will be there waiting to be used at the appropriate time.
Congratulations you now know how to use Plugins.
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About the Author:
Would you like to learn more about WordPress or blogging in general then visit my blog, http://www.nick-squires.com or if your looking to have a money making blog set up for free then visit http://www.letsmoneyblog.info
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