Posts Tagged ‘Wordpress help’

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!

Image via Wikipedia

Stand back, stand back, clear the decks… I need to experiment.

Here’s the scenario

Birds on the Blog has a brother, he’s young and just getting started. Birds needs to keep and eye on him without losing her own space and momentum. We all know siblings get up to and Birds wants to be supportive without interfering. What can she do?

Is there a thing such as a ticker (I know Blogmistress will tell me off, no moving, no distractions) that will go across the top of Birds to let her know what her little bro’ is up to?

A quick search shows me…

There is the notices ticker plugin

Then there is the news ticker plugin

and then there is this one, a ticker for a widget

It seems that keeping an eye on your little brother is an international thing

Have a look and let me know what you think will suit Birds needs best.

Over to you

Sarah