Yesterday I wrote the article on how to select and install the right theme for your blog or website. No doubt it’s very important to have a good-looking, responsive and best-fit theme for your blog/website. So if you’ve not yet read that article then you can read here. But today I’ll show you how you can make your website more useful for your readers by installing more plugins to your WordPress site. In this article you will know how to install WordPress plugins.
What Are WordPress Plugins?
If you notice then you will observe that like a software, a website also has components that add different functionalities to the website. For example, a simple site search box, forms, subscription box and social buttons to like and share pages. In other CMS that takes care of everything themselves, they also provide all of the basic functionalities by default. So on all those companies hosted CMS you only need to enable those functionalities to appear on the live site. But all other CMS will have few features compared with WordPress.
Read: WordPress.com Vs WordPress.org — All You Need To Know
How To Host Your Own Blog Or Website With WordPress
How To Install WordPress Theme And Find Best Theme To Suit Your Needs
WordPress keeps everything upto you, from installing a feature to removing a feature. All WordPress does it provides you plugins. By adding a plugin you add a feature to your site. For example, if you want to add a contact form to your site then you can easily install a plugin that adds contact forms and it’s extremely easy to install.
How To Install WordPress Plugins?
When you visit WordPress plugin directory at www.wordpress.org/plugins, there you see 41,721 plugins available to download & install. It means that you have great number of alternatives to add just one feature to your blog. It’s just amazing!
You can install any plugin from plugin directory without paying a penny. It’s all free. Although many plugins have paid features too that you will need to subscribe after you install those plugins.
There are two ways to install a plugin –
- Admin Panel
- FTP client
1. Install Plugins From Admin Panel
To install a plugin from Admin Panel, simply login to your WP site and from admin menu, click Plugins >> Add New. Now you’ll see the page like below. This is the place where you’ll have reach to the thousands of plugins.
As you can see by default the plugins are sorted in featured category. You can also sort the plugins in the popular, recommended and favorites. Favorites only have the plugins that you favorited in past. You can also search any specific type of plugin from the search engine at the top right. For example, if you want to install plugins for website contact form then you can just search contact form and it will return you plugins that add contact form. But you can also search any specific plugin say, ‘Contact Form 7‘.
To install any plugin simply click the ‘Install’ button. The plugin will be first downloaded to the server WordPress directory and then it’ll be installed. Don’t worry it’s all automatic and takes only seconds to happen. Once the plugin is installed you see the following message that confirms that the plugin is installed now.
Now click ‘Activate Plugin’ to activate it immediately after it installed. Once click it you’re all done. Your desired plugin is now installed and working.
2. Install Plugin Using FTP Client
Installing plugin using an FTP client is a bit complex and you might think in front of the first method using FTP client is time wasting. But you should not be thinking that. This method is very useful to install plugins that you purchased from third-party developers.
Actually, WordPress does not itself program all plugins available in the plugins directory. Instead, it allows developers from all around the World to submit their developed plugins to WordPress. That’s the reason why WordPress has thousands of plugins. Although, WordPress takes care of the quality of all plugins so you should not worry about it anymore.
Developers don’t always provide plugins with all the free features but they make some features free and some important features require you to pay. Most developers provide paid features plugins from their website, so you will have to download the plugins after you pay and that plugin will be uploaded to server WordPress plugin directory using FTP client.
I’ll use the same image for FileZilla FTP client that I used in theme installation tutorial.
Now connect to your WP database using FTP client FileZilla and upload the plugin in public_html >> wp-content >> plugins. You’re all done! You have installed plugin using FTP client.
Note: Don’t upload the compressed plugin file to WP plugin directory but extract the files first then upload.
How To Configure Installed WordPress Plugins
To configure this and all other installed plugins, just goto Plugins >> Installed Plugins.
Now you can see the options related to the plugins you installed including, settings options, activate or deactivate options and edit option. You also have plugin information in the right side of the plugin such as, plugin version and plugin developer.
Some plugins require more configuration so they add configuration option in the admin panel and all the settings regarding that plugin are sorted under that option.
Conclusion
It was all about how to install WordPress plugins. If I missed something then you can please inform me about in the comment below. In the next WordPress plugin tutorial I’ll explain you how to configure your installed plugins. If you like this article then don’t forget to share it with your friends.
