Almost every post at this blog is giving you useful and sometimes not that useful but curious plugins. It never occurred to me that someone of you may not know how to actually add those plugins to your WordPress powered blogs. Thus I’m going to fill in the missed point and give you a simple guide on how to add a plugin to your blog.
There are WordPress plugins that require editing your WordPress Theme template files and ones that do not require such modifications. Both types are installed the same way, just follow these simple steps:
* Download the desired plugin.
* Log-in to your WordPress admin panel.
* Click on Plug-ins on the left side of your panel.
* Click on Add New and then on the Upload Tab.
* Browse the downloaded plug-in file at your computer and click on Install Now.
* After your WordPress finishes the installation process click on Activate Plug-in.
That’s it, your WordPress plugin is added and active.
Generally this is everything you’ll need to do when adding a plugin, if there are other requirements the developer will for sure specify them, so read the text files that come with your plugin carefully. Besides, some plugins may require configuration, most WordPress Plugin authors give clear step-by-step instructions of the required configuration, so read these carefully as well.
Posts Tagged ‘WordPress tips’
How to Add WordPress Plugin. Simple Guide
July 16th, 2009Interact with your blog readers
April 9th, 2009
When you launch a blog you without doubt want to be popular, one of the ways to make your blog more interesting for your readers is to make it more interactive. There are many ways to do this. You can actually build a social network with plugin for WPMU called buddypress. But Wordpress MU requires dedicated hosting and it’s not that affordable for all the bloggers.
You can easily put some social media aspects to your blog with plugins.
Encourage your visitors to comment providing a backlink to their website, make your blog comments DoFollow. The DoFollow plugin removes a “nofollow” attribute from the link to a commenter’s website which WordPress automatically puts there.
A good way to interact with your readers is a WP-Polls plugin. This little plugin adds AJAX polls to your sidebar or blog posts. WP-Polls gives your users an opportunity to be active contributors, besides they are more likely to leave a comment after they vote.
There is another great plugin to encourage your visitors to comment and leave their feedback - Show Top Commentators. This plugin displays names of the most active commentators, the number of comments they made and a text link to their website, thus the commentators are more likely to come back to your blog and leave more feedback.
Are there any other tools you use to interact with your blog visitors?
WordPress template tags and a small announcement
March 31st, 2009
Running a blog for a while you eventually come to a desire to change something in your theme. Show tags as well as categories, change the format the date is displayed in, these and alike small changes can easily be done with WordPress tags. A template tag is a php code that tells WordPress to “do” or “get” something, but you do not have to be a coder to use Templates tags.
These tags are extremely simple to use and very well documented at wordpress.org. Basically, if you want your title to be shown put “”, and you will get the task done.
Read carefully the documentation at the link above, it is clearly explained there. The most used template tags are:
- the_title() - outputs the title
- the_permalink - outputs the posts permalink, used with “the_title” usually
- the_content() - displays the post body
- the_category() - displays the categories you put the post in
- the_tags() - shows the tags of the post
- the_author - outputs the name of the post author
- the_author_url - outputs the link to the author’s page, usually used in a link with “the_author”
There are many more of them listed and explained at the wordpress.org. So go ahead and make your blog template more personal.
And in conclusion I have a little announcement here:
WordPress is participating in the Google Summer of Code for the third year in a raw and encourages college students to apply. There are 3 days left for you to roll in, the deadline is April 3, 2009. Check out WordPress Codex GSoC2009 page for more info and FAQ. There also are some projects suggested. To apply go to the Google Summer of Code application site.
So, what tags do you use?
Plugins to back up your WordPress blog.
March 26th, 2009
We put a lot of our time and effort in our blogs, if you’ve been running one for a while you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Your blog becomes your primer interest, your biggest passion and the first thing you think about in the morning. And loosing even one single letter from your work becomes really painful. That’s why the theme of my today’s post should be of the greatest interest for you. Backing up your WordPress powered blog.
Well, there actually are few WordPress plugins to help you do the task.
Wordpress Database Backup
Simple plugin that allows you to schedule automatic daily, weekly or monthly database backups, which can be emailed to you or added to your FTP. There is a drawback of this plugin - it doesn’t give you a simple way to restore your database from the backup.
WP-DB Manager
This plugin gives you a comfortable database management right from your admin panel. Being more complicated than Wordpress Database Backup WP-DB Manager has more features, ‘restore from backup’ feature is among them.
As you see, these two plugins provide back up only for your database. But what about everything else: your precious themes, plugins, images?
Well, there is the WordPress Backup plugin that manages all these valuable elements of your blog and emails the back ups to you.
All mentioned plugins nicely work together and I suggest using them all for more safety.
Are there any other tools you use to back up you blogs?
Make your WordPress a time machine.
March 17th, 2009
Imagine you have to go somewhere for a period of time. Say, on a vacation you’ve been dreaming about for years. And what? Leave your blog without updates and your precious readers without your brilliant every day posts? No way, you say.
You can of course forget about going anywhere and stay at home, updating your blog, or you can take a lap-top and work from where you are going, but what is the pleasure in working on a vacation? WordPress is way smarter than that, you have a better option.
You can set the date of publishing a post into any date in future. Your blog will update itself and post your content at the time you specified.
How do you do that? Simple as follows:
When posting an article you can see a Post Timestamp section in the bottom right of the page. It displays the time and date you opened the posting page of your blog, if you change the date (click Edit Timestamp) you can set the date when your post will appear for any time in the future.
Now finish your post, select the time and date you would like the text to see the world and click Publish. No, it won’t appear at your blog right away! Check yourself, it isn’t there. 
You can still edit the post that is to be published with a future Timestamp under Manage Posts, changing smth and clicking Save won’t effect the Timestamp at all.
So, go ahead! To the vacation you longed for so long!
By the way, where would you go for a vacation?
Make your blog more protected
March 10th, 2009Ensuring your WordPress blog security is one of the main things to mind when keeping a successful web presence.
Below are some fruitful tips fro you on how to make you precious blog more protected.
1. First of all regularly update your WordPress. Older versions are hacked easier and therefore more frequently.
2. Make sure all your plugins are updated to their latest versions.
3. Delete “Admin” User. To make it harder for the hackers create a new user with administrative rights, give the user a nickname. Than log out and log back as the new user you’ve just created and delete the “admin” user.
4. Make sure your password is strong. Use digits, letters and special characters.
5. Check if your WordPress database errors are turned off. In the latest versions of WordPress they are turned off by default.
6. Create a .htaccess file in “wp-admin/”. To do it paste the following to a new text file
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress
Now save the file as .htaccess and upload it to your “wp-admin/” folder.
7. Make your plugins hidden. If you do not know if they are hidden or not go to http://myblog.com/wp-content/plugins. If you see a 404 error there, they’re hidden. If you see them listed you have to hide them. To do that open the .htaccess file you’ve just uploaded to your “wp-admin/” folder and replace the contents with the followin
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# Prevents directory listing
Options -Indexes
# END WordPress
8. Don’t forget to backup regularly.
These were some simple yet rather fruitful security tips to make your WordPress powered blog a bit more protected.
6 Tips On Attracting Readers To Your Blog
February 26th, 2009After you have created a blog it is important to attract readers to it in order for your blog to gain good audience base. Here are some tips on promoting your blog through the web.
1. Post tutorials. Articles which imply a kind of how-to or tutorial are of great value as they may be useful for many web masters, especially when they deal with the issue you mention in your article. Providing tips and pieces of advice will definitely be appreciated by most of the readers so think about some constructive information to share.
2. Everyday writing. If you want your blog to be arresting you must show that it is updated frequently and thus readers may expect some new information to appear soon. Just make your blog look fresh by adding interesting news, some creative articles and so on. Updating daily would be the best as it may even make your blog viewers bookmark your source. After some time you may add new posts to your blog rarely but if you have just launched a blog it is important to renew it every day.
3. Domain name. Make sure your blog has some serious name as it will make the viewers sure your source is really worth visiting and contains deserving information. Be attentive to make it rememberable as well for the users to remember it easily and then spread it among others telling how interesting your source is.
4. Leave comments. If you want to draw more attention to your blog you can start posting comments on other web masters’ blogs. It is better to comment on blogs related thematically to your own one as common topic will make other users get interested in your content, and also try to write something really useful and smart within your comment.. When you leave a comment you are often allowed to have your name linked to your blog. So every user can click on it and be redirected automatically to the source you represent.
5. Submit articles. From time to time you can submit your most impressive and constructive articles to the websites allowing publishing your content within their base. This will let other web masters familiarize with your best writings and allow your content spread through the web.
6. Submit the blog. You can go the blogtopsites.com and submit your blog here which willnot bring you a huge number of new readers but nevertheless will bring traffic. The procedure is very easy and fast and implies only finding the necessary category for your blog and submitting it there. With the lapse of time it will attract more and more new viewers to your source so the thing is really worth the effort.
Of course, this list is not exhaustive and there can be more modes of promoting your blog and more ways to receive traffic but these 6 tips are the most simple basic pieces of advice every web master can make use of easily. What is your secret weapon in gaining readers?