Welcome to this new section of the word press corps we're going to step back from the building and the
designing of our actual Web site and move on to plug ins plug ins are really really really important
for being able to customize your own web site and to create a web site that has all kinds of features
such as security backing up e-mail opt ins you name it.
There's a plug in for it on wordpress.
So in this lesson I just want to verify that you know how to install a new plug in.
So if you've already learn how to install a new plug in from the previous lessons where we did it really
quickly with some of the design features we don't have to watch this less and you can skip to the next
one and each lesson in this section we'll be covering a specific WordPress plug in and how to use it
and why we use it.
So first let's learn how to install a new plug in from WordPress.
You can go to plug ins add new.
This will take you to a search page where you can find new plug ins.
Now there are all kinds of premium plug ins that you could find on different Web sites from developers
who create custom plugins.
These are great for certain kinds of jobs but I personally like using the free option.
So in this course I'm going to recommend some of the premium options if you want to actually purchase
a plug in but I'll also be showing you the free version if you want to bootstrap your web site and start
it basically for no cost.
So here we're on the ad plug ins page and if you haven't been on here before you can see the featured
plug ins.
These are very popular plug ins that WordPress recommends for all kinds of things and we'll be looking
at some of these.
We've already looked at jet pack right now which was pre-installed when I installed where it pressed
on my blue host web website.
You might not have installed it yet if you're not using Baloo has to search for a plug in you can search
in the search box.
Now we can search for any thing say we want to add a gallery to our Web site we can search for gallery
and find all kinds of plug ins for creating different galleries.
I will admit that the plug in surge is not the best.
It's difficult to understand how some of these search results appear.
You have a mixture of some that are highly rated ones that have been around for a long time and have
lots of installs and some that have been recently updated versus some that haven't.
And these are the key things to look at when installing a plug in.
You don't want to install a plug in that hasn't been updated.
Probably you don't want to install a plug in that is not compatible with this version or your version
of wordpress.
There are some plug ins that just haven't been updated yet but they have a great reputation and they
will be updating for your current version of wordpress.
So that's one thing that you want to look at.
The next is Last Updated.
So if it hasn't been updated in the past year then I would say skip it.
You don't want to use a plug in that's old outdated.
This is a formula for disaster in which hackers can figure out how to hack into your web site via an
old plugin.
You also want to look at the ratings.
Typically you want to make sure that it's over four stars.
Of course this is just like anything else you want to make sure that it has good ratings and then active
installs.
Yes there might be some great new plug ins out there that don't have many installs but I typically use
the ones that have the most installs or at least a lot of installs which proves that there are a lot
of people using it and a lot of people like that.
So to find out more about any of these plug ins we can click on it right here.
Click on the title it pops up a new window with a description instructions for installing screenshots
of the plug in which might not matter for some different plug ins.
But for example for a gallery plug in we'd want to look at what it looks like.
There's other frequently asked questions we can see the reviews.
These are all good things to look at.
If we're happy with it we can click Install now from here.
Once it's installed we can activate it from this menu right here because we have it installed doesn't
mean we can use it yet.
But I'm not going to activate it yet.
I'm going to go to our installed plugins page right here.
Here you can see all of the plug ins that we have installed the ones that are highlighted in blue are
active.
The ones that are highlighted in blue aren't active so to activate this photo gallery we can click activate
from here.
Sometimes when you install a new plug in a window will pop up or a new banner will pop up at the top
of your screen that will kind of guide you through using that plug in.
So we could just click Start here to view this photo gallery plug in.
You can see that it added to menu items.
The photo gallery and the photo gallery add ons.
Now I personally have never even used this gallery plug in before so I would have to walk myself through
this to learn.
But that's what I'm going to do with the rest of the plug and I'll know how to use them and I'll walk
you through them in a little bit more depth.
But in this lesson I just wanted to show you how to answer.
So let's go back to our installed plugins page and learn how to delete a plug in.
Sometimes after you've installed a plug into the window keeps popping up so until you click the dismiss
button it's just going to keep popping up.
Hello Dolly plug in is automatically installed and this is one that I want to delete because it really
serves no purpose.
You can read what it means right here.
So I'm going to deactivate it because right now I can't delete it.
I have to deactivate it first.
So I clicked deactivate once it's deactivated from my web site.
I can now delete it by clicking the delete button and confirming that I want to delete the other thing
I want to mention is updating.
There are different ways to update your plug ins but one is by going to this installed plugins page.
And here we can see that the mojo marketplace plug in which was installed when I installed WordPress
with blue hosts needs an update and has this little banner right here I can click Update now here or
I can go to dashboard update and we saw this earlier in the course where this is sort of your home page
for updates.
It will include updates for Wordpress itself for plug ins or themes.
It's interesting right now it doesn't show that that mojo marketplace needs an update.
So it's important to check both places.
So back on the installed plugins page I'm just going to click update now.
Now for best practices it's important to check if the update is good to go for your web site search
on their Web site.
Go to those plug ins Web site and see what the details are with the new plug in.
Sometimes I've updated a plug in and there was some sort of a glitch with it and it either messed up
my web site or it messed up that plug in.
So you want to make sure that everyone's happy with the update at the same time you need to balance
this out with making sure you update frequently because if you leave a plug in not updated.
There might be a glitch with that plug in.
Perhaps there was a vulnerability that could lead to hacking.
So you want to make sure that you do update your plug ins because usually it means that the creator
of that plug in is fixing a problem or making it even better.
So that's how you find install and activate any new plug in.
Also how you delete plug ins in the follow up lessons.
I'm going to be going over a specific task that I encourage you to do for your web site before you launch
it to the world.