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For anybody just getting started with WordPress, pretty much as soon as you’ve chosen your theme, the next thing to do is to take a look at plugins… in preparation, let’s take a look at how to download/upload, install and activate them…
Here’s a quick all-you-need-to-know video – from our new YouTube channel:
How to install a WordPress plugins (the right way):
– (note: video credits to Topher DeRosia – creator of HeroPress)
Video Transcript:
Hi! This is Topher with WinningWP. In this video we’re going to take a look at how to install new WordPress plugins. So let’s get right to it. The first thing we need to do is log into our website. So we simply put /login at the end of our URL here and then put in our username and password. Now that we’re logged in, in the left admin bar we can go to Plugins -> Add New. On this page it offers us some suggested plugins. But there’s a specific one that I’m looking for, so in this search plugins bar I’m going to type in Disable Comments. Now imagine for a moment that I’ve had my site up for a while and I’ve had comments on, on a number of posts but decided that they’re just not worth it and I want to turn them off everywhere but I don’t want to go to every post and do that. This plug-in allows me to do it all at once for all of them. So I click install now, and now it’s installed. But it’s not actually doing anything yet. First I need to activate it, so now I’ll click activate. Now this plug-in is installed and running. You can see at the top that there’s some configuration to do and some plugins will do that and some won’t. Now I’ve shown you how to install a plug-in from the cloud but now I want to show you how to install a plugin that you have downloaded and this may be because you bought it or a friend gave it to you or perhaps you wrote it yourself. We could go back to the left nav and click add new again or at the top of this page is another add new button. They both do the exact same thing, so I will click this one. Now at the top there’s an upload plug-in button. We’ll click that, and we’re presented with an interface to upload a zip file. And here’s my zip file and I click install now. Just like with the other interface, just because I’ve installed it doesn’t mean it’s active yet. Here’s our activate plug-in button and I’ll click that. Now we have a plugin that allows us to duplicate posts with a single button push. Let’s review the process real quick. When installing from the web first we need to log in at /login. Then we go to Plugins -> Add New, Search for the plug-in you want, click Install Now, and then click Activate and just like that your plugin is installed. But if you’ve purchased your plug-in, and you have a zip file or wrote it yourself or anything like that the process is similar. You log into your site, go to Plugins -> Add New but then at the top click Upload Plug-in. Then you upload your file and then click Activate. That’s all there is to it to installing WordPress plugins. If you’d like to read a blog post on this topic check the description field below this video for a link to WinningWP where there’s an excellent article about it. If you’d like to learn more about WordPress check out WinningWP.com.
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