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Plug-ins are small programs specifically designed for use with WordPress. They add additional features and functionality that don’t come with the core WordPress software.
Manage Plug-ins
Click the Plug-ins button on the left hand side of the Dashboard. This will take you to a page that lists the installed plug-ins for your website. The list displays the name of each plug-in with a description of the plug-in to the right. Beneath the plug-in’s name are links to either Activate or Deactivate a plug-in. There is also an Edit link. DO NOT try to edit a plug-in unless you have some PHP programming skills.
Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins_Installed_SubPanel
Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins_Editor_SubPanel
Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins_Add_New_SubPanel
One thing with plug-ins that will pop up ALL THE TIME is updates. This can be kind of annoying, especially if the developer of the plug-in updates it quite often. When a plug-in has an available update, a number will appear next to the Plug-ins button, indicating how many plug-ins have available updates. Sometimes the updates include added functionality, but most of the time they are created to fix “bugs” detected in the software.
It’s very easy to update a plug-in. Click on the Plug-ins button. On the plug-in’s page you’ll find highlighted sections near the plug-ins that have updates available.
Click on the “upgrade automatically” link and you will be taken to a new page while the plug-in downloads and installs the new files to your website.
Wait for the page to display the “Plug-in reactivated successfully” message. Then you can either click the “Return to Plug-ins page” link to upgrade other plug-ins or you can move on to something else.
NOTE: You may want to ask a web designer for advise before updating WordPress or any plug-ins. There’s always a chance that an update might not be compatible with other plug-ins or your current version of WordPress.
The following plug-ins should be installed on your website. These are basic instructions meant to help you understand more about how your website works and not so much for you to begin making major changes to your website. Even though you have the right to make any changes you wish to your own website, you may need the help of an experienced WordPress website designer to handle these more advanced features.
Akismet
This is probably the most widely used plug-in for WordPress. Akismet is a spam filter that checks incoming comments from your visitors. When it finds suspected spam comments, it will hold them for you to examine. You may then delete them, ignore them and let Akismet delete them or you may find a legit comment that you wish to allow to be posted on your website. Occasionally Akismet will label a legit comment as spam, but for the most part everything it catches is genuine spam.
A WordPress API code is required to install this plug-in. This involves going on to WordPress.com and creating an account with them. If you just want an account and not an actual website (because you’ve already got one), make sure to click on “I just want an account”.
Your website designer should have taken care of this for you.
Settings
Under Plugins, on the left side of the Dashboard, you will find the Akismet Configuration button. This is where the WordPress API code goes. You can also check the box telling Akismet to delete spam on older posts. This is a personal preference which depends on how you run your website and how busy your website is.
There are other settings related to comments under the Settings – Discussion link.
Find out more here: http://akismet.com/
All in One SEO Pack
SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is a very important part of any website. Some companies spend thousands of dollars a year on SEO in order to show up at the top of the page of the most commonly used search engines. Luckily WordPress has been developed to be very search engine friendly. With the help of the All in One SEO Pack, it is very easy to keep your website optimized.
It doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars to achieve the best results, but it does require key knowledge of how search engines work and a lot of your time. This section will go over the All in One SEO Pack plug-in. For the “key knowledge” I’m referring to, see the section in this manual on SEO.
Settings
The settings can be found under Settings – All in One SEO.
First, make sure the plug-in is “enabled”. The next three boxes are to add a Title, Description, and Keywords to your website’s home page. This information will only be added to the corresponding Meta Tags within the page code of your home page.
The plug-in provides the ability to adjust the Title tags of many of the dynamic WordPress pages such as the Archive or Category pages.
Using the All in One SEO in your posts/pages
By itself, All in One SEO Pack will automatically generate a Description from your content. It usually takes the first sentence from your page just as Google does if you don’t have a Description Meta tag. It will also produce Keywords based on your WordPress Tags and Categories if you set it to do so. However, it’s much more effective and more powerful when you type in your own data for each post or page.
Go into the editing mode of any post or page on your website. Then scroll down to the section labelled All in One SEO Pack. There you’ll see a form to enter a Title, Description, and Keywords for that particular post or page.
To understand the importance of adding this extra data to each post/page for the sake of SEO, see the section in this manual on SEO.
Find out more here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
WordPress Database Backup
Once you’ve posted several articles and amassed a few dozen valuable comments, you don’t want your data to be lost. This is especially necessary if your web host doesn’t provide regular backups. The best web hosts should have backup servers for when the first one goes down or gets hacked. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take matters into your own hands and backup your own data.
Settings
You’ll find the settings for this under Tools – Backup.
The size of your backup file and the time it takes to perform a backup will depend on how much data is in your website.
I prefer to download the backup to my computer. Backing it up onto your web host’s server defeats the purpose of having your own backup. Emailing it to yourself may be difficult once your backup file becomes too large. If your website only has a few pages, then the emailing choice should be fine.
A compressed SQL file is what you will receive because WordPress uses a MySQL database.
NOTE: This will backup only the textual data from your website’s database (posts, pages, comments, tags, categories, settings, etc.). It will not backup any images, videos, PDF’s, audio files, and so forth. Hopefully you already have backups of all that data. It also doesn’t backup the actual WordPress files or theme files. Hopefully your web designer has those backed up if it wasn’t provided to you.
With FTP access to your website, you can backup all the WordPress files and your non-database files as mentioned in the above note.
For the most secure backup procedures you should use both the WordPress Database Backup plug-in and an FTP program. This way if anything disastrous happens to your website, you will be able to re-upload all your files from your computer and re-install the database from your compressed SQL file.
Find out more here: http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup
WP-reCAPTCHA
WP-reCAPTCHA is the WordPress version of the popular ReCaptcha software used to stop spammers from using automated software to create hundreds and thousands of false user accounts and comments on your website.
By now you’ve undoubtedly come across this plug-in in action on other websites. There are different forms of it and there are some similar programs out there that perform the same function.
It requires the user to prove they’re human and not some automated program by typing in a series of characters into a field. If you type it in incorrectly, you are given additional chances to try again. This is helpful since it’s meant to be difficult to read by the automated programs used by spammers.
To install this plug-in you must create a free account at recaptcha.net where you’ll be given two special codes to add to your plug-in before it can work.
This should have been handled by your web designer.
Settings
Under Settings – reCaptcha you will find all the settings for this plug-in and the location of the installed reCaptcha codes.
You should have it enabled for comments and the registration form.
You can alter its color to blend better with your website design (only a few choices are provided).
You may also use reCaptcha to hide emails displayed within your comments to prevent your users from being spammed. This is a personal preference. Your visitors may want their email addresses available or maybe you want only registered users to have access to visitor email addresses.
Find out more here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-recaptcha/
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