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So – what are “plugins”?

Basically, they add functionality to your WordPress blog or website. There are thousands of them available, all created by elves who love to share their geek creations with the world. (OK – so they’re not elves, but the plugin programmers love that WordPress is open source and add what they can to the collective!). And while they may be free (mostly), if the added functionality is useful for you, it is a good thing to make a donation to that plugins creator, if such an option exists.

The first plugins that you will come across are the Akismet spam filter and Hello Dolly. The first is a welcome standard that we urge you to activate and use, the second is pure frivolity from the WordPress creators and you can either use it or delete!

The way we recommend you approach adding more plugins is to source them from the WordPress.com site (ideally) and to install and activate one at a time. Sometimes plugins can conflict with each other or with a theme – if your WordPress suddenly dies, the first thing we look at is the plugins.

Probably the best way to go about choosing a plugin is to first of all identify what you need, so for this post I have decided I want a cool twitter plugin.

You can review the plugins available on the WordPress website, in which case the first place to go to is WordPress Plugins and search for what you want – in this instance ‘twitter’ and I’ve decided to sort by Highest Rated and after looking at a few I’ve chosen WP to Twitter as it looks pretty interesting.

To add a new plugin, from your Dashboard go to Plugins > Add New – here I am going to search for the specific plugin chosen ‘wp to twitter’ and once the search results come up click on install to the right of the description.

The full description and information will come up but as I’ve already looked into this plugin I am ready to click on Install Now, it shouldn’t take long to install and once done you’ll get a confirmation to show it’s installed and also asking if you want to activate it.

Plugins cannot be used on your WordPress until they are activated – Plugins, Installed and activate (an option under the plugin’s description) - once you have done this you either have to sort out their settings or go to widgets and pop them into the side bar, see WordPress Widgets, What, Why How Post.

Now I’ve activated WP to Twitter I will need to give it more information, as no extra menu appeared in my dashboard sidebar menu I’ve had a look in Settings and it is there at the bottom of that menu. Your plugins options, etc will be available from the Dashboard menu – either within Settings, Tools, or perhaps with a menu item of its own.

So, now I’ve installed the plugin, activated and popped the required information into the settings. That’s it, all done!

While I am in my dashboard I’ve also decided I no longer need some plugins that I had previously installed so time to delete some. To do this simply click on plugins and here you’ll see a list of what you have, if you simply don’t want to use a plugin for now click on deactivate, if you really didn’t get on with that plugin and no longer wish to use it click on delete.

Hopefully having read this you’ll see that there really isn’t much effort or geeky stuff to be done to get a plugin working on your site and if you need help just leave a comment and we’ll get back to you.

If you are unsure of what you should have and would like us to give your WordPress a healthcheck click here to book a session with the blogmistress

It’s really easy to feel dazed and confused when you are first faced with the WordPress Dashboard, there’s so much there!  Well, don’t be, this is what makes using WordPress great, lots of options so you don’t just have to end up with a boring inflexible blog but a slick looking website.

Here’s a brief introduction into the dashboard that will hopefully help you get started…

So you start with three columns there, the menu bar running along the left hand side, two columns with useful information about your WordPress site and also helpful updates about WordPress features.

Top left, this is an overview of your blog as it stands, pretty helpful but I’d suggest using the menu bar to make changes.

Top right you will see QuickPress, this is really handy if you know exactly what you want to post into your blog or want to make a quick draft to go back to later without faffing around, you can still add pictures/media here too.

So, onto the menu bar:

Posts:

• Edit – edit posts that you have already made whether they have been published or are waiting as a draft for you to finish off.
• New – takes you straight to a fresh new post where you can talk about what you like, add pictures (and other media) and either publish or save as a draft.
• Tags – these are words that are associated with the post you are writing at any one time, for example this post could use the tags dashboard, help and housekeeping.
• Categories – this is a way to group your blog posts, for example the categories for this post could use WordPress, tutorial and tips.

It’s best to have a think about what categories you’d like for your posts and keep them relevant to your site, both tags and categories will be really helpful to your readers especially as you fill your blog with lots of posts!

Media:

Here you go straight into the media library, this is where you can see any media you have posted to your site and also where you can add new. You’ll probably find that you will add media as you go when writing your posts and it will automatically find it’s way here.

Links:

WordPress has links in here when it is first installed so you’ll probably want to pop into here and have a sort out, maybe take these out if they’re not relevant to your site and add your own. Here’s a useful post that your blogmistress made for you to help you out on link categories Change your WordPress Blogroll name – video tutorial

Pages:

WordPress doesn’t limit you to just having a blog page, here you can add other pages, for instance you might like to have Home, About and Contact pages. It’s very easy here to add your pages here and edit these in a similar way to posting a blog entry.

Comments:

This is an easy place to manage comments made on your site, here you can can approve (or not!), reply to and edit. On the main dashboard page you will see if there are any comments that need to be looked at.

Appearance:

• Themes – You’ll go straight into Manage Themes when you click on Appearance, if this is a new WordPress install you’ll probably want to have a poke around for one that will suit your site. There are loads of free themes to choose from and we’re also putting together a useful post on how to add and manage themes!
• Widgets – This is where you manage your plugins that you can add into your sidebar, here’s our useful post on how to work with widgets – WordPress Widgets – What, Why, How
• Editor – An easy place to edit the main files for your template – but only do this if you are sure of what you are doing. Tinkering with these files isn’t advised unless you have made backups.
• Add New Themes – This will give you search options to narrow down the themes on offer.
• Custom Header – You’ll have the current header image displayed and can upload a new one to try with your theme, pretty handy!

Plugins:

• Installed – Here you will see a list of all plugins installed and whether active or inactive and also if they have upgrades available.
• Add New – This is pretty similar to the Add New Themes where you can search to see if a plugin you need is available.
• Editor – This is where it is far too easy to tinker with your plugin files, please only make changes here if you have backed up and happy to change these.

Users:

• Authors & Users – Lists the users that are registered with your site to subscribe/contribute.
• Add New – If you want others to contribute to your site you set them up here with various permissions to suit your needs.
• Your Profile – add and edit your user information here.

Tools:

In here you can use some of the useful tools that WordPress provides along with importing and exporting your blog and upgrade wordpress.

Settings:

Here you can manage your general settings for WordPress, just go through the options and change what you need to, it’s not too complicated and normally you don’t need to mess around in here too much. For example how you wish your blogs urls to be set go to permalinks, personally I pop /%postname%/ into custom structure, this displayes like this http://www.yoursite.co.uk/example-post

There you go, that’s a quick run through the WordPress Dashboard, hopefully helpful. Probably the best way to learn is have a play with the settings and also keep an eye on future posts here at blogmistress

Don’t worry about breaking your WordPress either, here’s a useful post – What to do when your WordPress breaks!

When I first started using WordPress I really wished I had asked the question ‘umm, what’s a widget?’, plugins made sense to me (although at the time I hadn’t yet installed or used one) as the name gave me a pretty good idea.  But when I was asked to see which widgets were installed (or something like that) I just thought the person couldn’t think of the name e.g. which doo-dahs are present on the thingamabob?

Often when you install a plugin you will need to place it in the sidebar to see it on your site.  To do this go to the dashboard >appearance > widgets.  Widgets are plugins and tools that get popped into your sidebar to appear on your site.  Or in codex.wordpress.org speak:

WordPress Widgets (WPW) is like a plugin, but designed to provide a simple way to arrange the various elements of your sidebar content (known as “widgets”) without having to change any code.

When you first install WordPress there are already widgets present which can be dragged to the sidebar area to activate them and choose further options to suit your needs, you can also drag them to change which order they appear.

The widgets you get at first are listed below with a brief description, whether you use them is up to you and how you want your blog to look:

• Archives – shows a list of months in which posts have been made, click on that month and it takes you to those posts.
• Calendar – a handy calendar and if there are posts for a particular date it appears as a link to your posts.
• Categories – you get a list of category links and when clicked will show the related posts.
• Links – the blogroll lists sites you want to link to, these can be edited easily from your dashboard > links (on the left hand side)
• Meta – handy links to login in to your admin panel etc
• Pages – displays the pages you have on your WordPress site, easy to setup and edit from your dashboard > pages
• Recent Comments – latest comments you have received and approved will show here.
• RSS – follow the latest posts and news from other sites, i’ve used http://www.blogmistress.com/feed here as an example
• Search – displays a search box for your site
• Tag Cloud – displays up to 45 of the top used tags from your posts, you’ll decide on tags when you are writing your blog posts.
• Text – displays a text box where you can put any information you like, also used to pop in HTML etc (this is a very useful widget, one that we’ll cover in more detail soon).

Probably the best way to decide is experiment with each; don’t worry, you won’t break anything

Although it may not be a great idea to have every single one showing on your site

The Blogmistress has ventured into screencasting in order to take you through the screens to add your first widgets to your sidebars (be gentle with her, it’s her first!):

Not content with cracking her whip via email, skype and twitter the blogmistress installed Dashboard Notepad too! It’s really handy actually, just a place to jot down to-do lists, ideas on future posts and to be able to leave a message for sarah and I to respond to.

Blogmistress asked me to check it out and if I could see it, and as expected there it was but the problem being I could only view it, assuming she didn’t like me answering back I let her know I could see it and that was it. Well, it turns out the clever little plugin also has more options but not that obvious when you start using it. Just to the top right of the notepad itself click on configure and you get the options on who can edit and who can read the notes – nice and simple and everything you’d need.

There are other notepad plugins, this one allows you to have three pads in your dashboard (I wasn’t going to mention this, don’t want to give her ideas! ) but they all do more or less the same thing.

Very handy to make notes for yourself and also if you have multiple users, I think this is going to be very useful for us.

It’s always good to ask what your readers and visitors think so why not have a poll?  If I happen across a website with one I tend to vote, it kind of feels good to give your opinion very quickly and also, more often than not, I want to know what others think too so I’d have to vote to see the result (yes, I know, I am way too nosey for my own good ).

I’ve had a look and a play with a few poll plugins and although there are quite a few to choose from I thought Flash Poll ++ and WP-Polls were pretty cool as they were easy to install and use, although out of the two Flash Poll ++ gets my vote for the look on the site and also ease of use in the admin dashboard and I am unanimous in that!

Oh, I need to mention Democracy Ajax Poll too, apparently it is really good and was the first I tried to install, it didn’t want to work on my personal site so I lost interest – this is probably due to other plugins I have but I’m not one to faff for too long! But by all accounts it is cool to use.  Your blogmistress also demanded asked for ‘simple’ so when it looked like it was conflicting with other plugins I decided it was time to move on!

Both Flash Poll ++ and WP-Polls were quick and easy to install as plugins and pop into the sidebar (loving them both already!) and I would say the only difference between the two is that Flash Poll ++ is better eye candy for your reader and comes with enough easy options to change colours, etc, although both offer this facility and WP-Polls has a lot more options (whether necessary I’m not sure).

Why not try a poll on your site?  It might just give you some valuable information, your readers feel like their opinions count and enjoy being a bit more interactive with you without the need to send a ‘why-oh-why’ email or comment