Not only are WordPress blogs impressively user friendly for bloggers of all kinds and in all different business markets, but the availability of plugins adds varied tones of functionality in numerous forms. These plugins are formated, maintained, and endorsed by WordPress users and can add various layers of functionality and class to a blog.
Why Plugins?
Anyone with WordPress blogs for their accountant business websites can easily add plugins, and there are a multitude of uses and benefits to installing them; both for yourself and for your readers. Some plugins are simple and can add things like social media buttons to your blog. Others are more complicated, such as a plugin that integrates a full image gallery with dozens of viewing options. In general, they are used to add additional functionality to your blog and save you the hassle of having to build and code it yourself.
Where do I get plugins?
There are several places you can go to find plugins. One of them is within the admin panel of your blog. Your admin panel has a menu item called Plugins. To install one, simply click install! There is also a WordPress page that is devoted to listing plugin options. You can search for all different types to narrow down what you’re looking for, and you can also view the most popular plugins.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
Downloading plugins from here requires an extra step. You’ll need to locate the downloaded file, then unzip it before you can upload it to your WordPress blog. Either option is entirely user friendly and basic. Rarely, people may need to modify security settings on their server to get a particular plugin to work.
What to do with your new Plugin?
Once you have found the plugin you would like to use, and if you installed it via the WordPress interface, you will need to activate it under the Plugin menu item.
If you downloaded the plugin to your computer, you will have to unzip it and then upload it to the wp-content/plugins folder. Once you upload the plugin folder to the above directory, you need to go to your plugin menu and activate it.
Some plugins will work immediately, others require that you add code to your template. Additionally, some others require different adjustments aside from coding that need to be completed before the plugin will work.
You’ll know which method you’ll need to follow after you activate the plugin, and if you have any questions about what needs to be done, you can always check the plugin authors’ site which will be available from a link within the Plugins menu.
How do I know it’s working?
Don’t forget to confirm that your plugin is working properly.
You can sometimes test your plugin right from the plugin settings menu. Otherwise, simply go to your blog page and test it from there.
Voila! If your plugin is working, feel free to move on to your next task or to even look into more plugins!
Of course, there is always the possibility that your plugin won’t work right away. If this happens, double check that you didn’t miss any steps, and you may need to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress for some plugins to work. You should also review the instructions on the plugin authors’ site.
Recommended plugins?
There are a lot of people that will tout the utility of certain plugins and of course if you have a specific goal in mind for your blog, there are plugins you will want to run, but everything is subjective.
You should install what you feel is right for your blog. A few I tend to use are W3 Total Cache, HeadSpace: WordPress SEO Made Simple and Gravity forms. Each of these plugins work really nicely with my blog for different purposes, including usability and Search Engine Optimization.
I think it’s also very important to back up my blog, just in case. For that, I use WP-DBManager, which can even email my WordPress database to me on a daily basis.
Finally, I tend to keep the comments section of my blogs open because I’m always looking for feedback and opinions so I need a few plugins to help with comment spam.
Finally, do you need Plugins?
The retort is a general, “It’s up to you.” If you are content with the functionality of your blog and experience minimal commenting junk, then there’s no desperate need for you to look into installing lots of plugins. For people who could do with supplementary functionality from a blog or for writers who don’t have the time to build, the plugins given to the WordPress nation are a great energy saving substitute.
