A first look at Plugins
Plugins are a way for you to expand the functionality of your blog, to allow it to do things that WordPress can't do by default. Like themes, plugins are not generally produced by WordPress and must be installed separately.
Some things to keep in mind about plugins:
- Don't install plugins you aren't sure of, they can break your blog. You can never be sure the plugin was well written and tested, you can only follow the reviews given by others who have previously installed them.
- Since plugins often modify WordPress's base functions, they can sometimes only be used with certain version of WordPress. You must check whether the plugin works with your version of WordPress.
- Likewise, don't upgrade your version of WordPress without first checking whether it will break your plugins. The more plugins you have, the more checking you have to do.
- People build plugins for fun, they are not obliged to keep them up to date, fix errors or help you out if something goes wrong
- Some plugins have grown in popularity until they've come to be considered indispensable, in the past some have been incorporated into the core functions
- Most plugins do something complicated enough that they need their own admin page. The creator decides were in the controls column the link to this page gets slotted in, you may have to look under each section if the location isn't obvious.
- Plugins are one of the main differences between the hosted WordPress.com software and the self-hosted WordPress.org software. If you install your own WordPress software on your own server you will have full control over how you modify the system with plugins. You do not have this control on WordPress.com sites.
Let's have a look at a test plugin and see how easy it is to activate.
From the Dashboard, click "Plugins" in the controls.
Again, you'll see a page much like the other pages that allow you to manage, Posts, Pages, Comments etc.
Two plugins are distributed with WordPress, Akismet, the anti-spam plugin to protect your comments which we will activate later, and Hello Dolly, a test plugin that does nothing more than display random lyrics for Louis Armstrong's "Hello, Dolly".
You'll see below the plugin name the options to "Activate" or "Delete". Click "Activate".
You'll receive confirmation that the plugin was activated. That's it. Simple. But it isn't always so quick. There are thousands of plugins that do all kinds of wonderful things, complicated things, and because of that they might need more configuration and ask you to complete more steps after the activation. What these steps are you won't know until they're presented to you or you read the installation guide that goes with the plugin. In the next lesson we'll see an example.
