How to add plugins and themes to a Wordpress site or blog
So you want to install some stuff on your blog, right? Some cool stuff? Well, there are two main kinds of cool things to install on your blog (or, for that matter, on your $100 website, if I built one of those for you — they’re proving to be really popular, don’t you know). Those cool things are themes and plugins.
Let’s start with plug-ins.
Plugins are so badass. If you want your blog to do just about anything (give a list of related posts following each post you make, add a contact form to your contact page, shave sheep), chances are there is a plugin that will make doing it super, ridiculously, retardedly easy for you.
Starting with Wordpress 2.7, the kind folks at Wordpress (which is the software that runs your website or blog if you’re awesome (and if you’re on Blogger or something else instead, you should totally migrate to Wordpress)) have finally made adding plugins very easy.
Here’s how you do it:
1. Log in to your blog’s admin console.
2. On the left, click “Plugins,” then “Add New” under that.
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3. Enter a term into the search box that describes what you want. So for instance, if I wanted to add a contact form, enter “contact form.”
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4. A list of plugins will come up. Choose one, and click on “Install” at the right.
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5. Now, click “Install now.”
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6. After that, you’ll want to activate the plugin by clicking “Activate Plugin.”
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Congratulations! You’ve added a plugin. Way easy, huh?
Themes
Your blog or website’s “theme” determines, in a nutshell, what the blog or site looks like. Change your theme and you totally change the look of the site. Again, thinking like the awesome people that they are, the Wordpress development team finally added easy-install theme functionality when they rolled out Wordpress version 2.8, similar to what they already had for plug-ins.
Here’s how you install a new theme.
1. Find a theme.
Now, disclaimer here… this quick install only works for themes that exist in the Wordpress Themes Directory. The bad news is that a lot of people develop themes that aren’t in the directory, and if you want to install those, you’ll still need to use FTP (which is kind of geeky). But the good news is that there are a hell of a lot of themes in the directory. Like, most of them are in there.
So go to the directory, browse through the themes, poke around, and find one you want to use. DON’T DOWNLOAD IT. Just note that theme’s name.
So for instance, I’m going to use iNove.
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2. Go to your blog’s admin console and on the left, click “Appearance” on the left, and then “Add new themes” under that.
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3. Enter the name of the theme you want in the search box.
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4. When your theme comes up, click “Install.”
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5. This little lightbox display will come up. Click “Install Now.”
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6. Now, just activate the theme by clicking on “Activate.”
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7. Now go to your blog’s main page and refresh. Voila!
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Congratulations. You are now a tech geek. Please form an orderly line at the left to receive your pocket protectors, taped-up glasses, and punch in the gut by the high school quarterback.
P.S: But what if you’re on a version of Wordpress below 2.7 and don’t have these options available to you? Well, fortunately, I have a solution for you.
I’m opening a can of whoop-ass
Okay, confession time. I’m not as together as you all think I am.
I know, I know… it’s shocking to think that a funny person would have issues. Stand-up comedians are paragons of psychological health, and role models such as Richard Pryor and Chris Farley prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that hilarity rides side-by-side with emotional stability and good judgment. Funny people are hardly ever messed up, hardly ever have deep, dark demons, and never turn to drugs to assuage those demons.
Well, I’ve never taken a drug in my life, or even more than two drinks in an evening. But I do have the demons.
It’s okay. It’s cool. Most of the time these things are no problem, but you take my still-present real estate “challenge” and let it burn my ass for several years, and I develop some pretty intense moments of worry. I develop some anger. It makes me so mad that while I have indeed used Naomi Dunford’s awesome advice to create what will probably be a $50k business in its first year, most of that is going right down the real estate toilet.
So yeah, I still worry a lot. But I’m cool with admitting that for two reasons:
One, a hell of a lot of you feel the same way. For many of you, I’m just saying what you’re thinking – especially in this economy.
And Two, because I’ve realized what I need to do about it. I’ve found the antidote to fear.
I’ll get to that in a minute. First, let’s address that fear and that worry, and the fact that a lot of it probably isn’t even real. Yeah, you heard me.
Here’s how this train of thought started: I just got back from a long weekend at my mom’s lake cottage, and while I was there, I read World War Z, which was totally awesome, and from which I found that I was taking a whole lot of surprising perspective. It’s about a zombie war. An outbreak causes corpses to reanimate and overrun the living until they are shot or impaled in the head, and the book is told through a bunch of first-person accounts. As much as I’ve beaten zombie jokes to death (no pun intended), there is nothing funny about WWZ. It’s really well-written, and I’m sitting there reading it and I’m thinking, “Wow, it would suck if this really happened.”
I’d put that book down and suddenly my shitty properties didn’t seem so bad. I’m healthy. My family is healthy. No reanimated corpses are waiting on the bottom of the lake. And even the property mess? I might have a rocky few months coming up, but even that will be fine. So why the worry?
I realized that a lot of my ongoing worry has no real antecedent. I’ve dubbed this “foo fear” — fear that is spectral, false, not really there. Yet, it’s everywhere — probably even in you.
You may be thinking that your fear isn’t like this. Your fear is very real. Well, is it? Let’s say you think you may legitimately lose your job soon. Think about that for a while, and ponder what it would mean. Would you have to move in with relatives? What’s your realistic worst-case scenario?
Now think about the fear. Honestly think about it. I’d wager that it’s not “I may have to live with relatives” fear. I’ll bet it feels closer to dying, to being crushed, to being rendered worthless and incapable of moving on. I’ll bet it feels crippling.
If so: Foo fear. Fake fear.
Okay, now back to my point #2 above. What’s the antidote to fear?
Action.
This has been bothering me. I write a lot of inspirational stuff. I read and agreed wholeheartedly with Dave Navarro’s post about how nobody is going to save you. I detest the notion of being a victim. I wrote in possibly my very favorite post about committing yourself to something. Yet time and time again (because I’m human, I guess), I feel that false fear and worry and I just let it grow.
You know the fastest way to make fear feel more and more intense? To do nothing and feel your control stripped away from you. You know the fastest way to alleviate it? All together, now: Action.
But here’s the cool part: It almost doesn’t seem to matter where you take that action. So in my case, what’s going to happen with my properties is going to happen. I have a plan, and I’m doing some things to try and get out, but there are certain things that are beyond my control. And you know what? I accept that I will have some ill-at-ease about the things I can’t control. I just want it to be manageable. I just want it to be proportional.
But, maybe I can control other things. Things that have nothing to do with real estate, but which will make me feel like the reins are back in my hands.
And that’s when I realized that I’ve gotten fat.
Now, I doubt that any of you would pass me on the street and think that I was fat. I currently weigh 210 at 6 feet tall, but I’m pretty strong and could honestly not get down to 170 unless I cut off a leg. But fitness has always been a passion of mine. It’s something that I’ve spent hours online discussing, written articles about, planning my routines and diet in great detail while watching TV. I read books on Olympic weightlifting while on vacation and negotiated with my gym until they’d allow me to buy rubber bumper weights and store them in the back room. This is a love of mine.
Yet as I felt more and more out of control with this real estate mess, I responded by giving up control of other things in my life. Like the way I ate and worked out. I still ate well… on occasion. I still went to the gym… less often and halfheartedly. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. But suddenly I was kind of out of control in all of these areas, and it left me feeling unable to act. In any area.
Well, it’s time to open up a can of whoop ass. And I want you all to hold me to it. I have two months (round to October 15th) to get down to 190 lbs. That’s a stretch; I haven’t been below 200 in forever. I was 185 about four years ago at my lowest, and I’ve gotten a hell of a lot stronger (i.e. more lean weight) since then. This is actually a retardedly difficult goal for me. But I’ll do it.
Now, will losing 20 lbs. solve my real estate woes? No. Will it make me feel more in control, less sloppy and weak-willed as a person, and hence better able to deal with those woes? Yes.
Will it reduce my day-to-day fear to logical, non-foo levels because I’m exerting what Tony Robbins aptly calls “personal power” — my ability to act? I think so.
I went out my first day back from vacation, yesterday, and did one of the hardest workouts I know. The weights I used were 315/210/155. It was quite painful. In the evening, my 4-year-old son Austin and I did a strongman workout. He got a few adaptations, like flipping a car tire instead of the behemoth I was using.
I’m quite sore today. I will probably not enjoy tomorrow’s workout. But it felt good to take control again, and that’s enjoyment beyond measure.
So if you’re getting that foo fear, open a can of whoop ass along with me. Post your control-grabbing commitment to the comments so that I can mock your sorry ass if you choose to wallow in worry instead of acting.
And I want you to mock me, too. You’re going to help me strengthen my sense of control, and I thank you for it.
P.S: I actually had this idea BEFORE meeting GenuineChris, but I have to admit that his NAMBLA/KKK weight loss plan may just be the most hilarious and non-PC self-discipline vehicle ever conceived.
Pester people with autoresponders
This post continues the last few posts, telling you all about how to use aWeber to manage your mailing list. So if you haven’t yet signed up for aWeber, you should do that now.
So to continue this little series of free aWeber tutorials, let’s talk autoresponders.
And actually, you may be wondering just what the hell “autoresponders” are. So here’s what they are, and how to use them.
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Got it? Rock on.
Dig this? Remember, it’s just a small sample of what’s in Zero to Business, so be sure to check that out!
