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.
RELATED POSTS:
- FREE WEBINAR: “Installing themes on your blog so you don’t look like a newbie douchebag”
- Video of the 4/13/09 webinar on blog themes
- Wordpress in general is cool, but here’s why versions 2.7 and especially 2.8 are particularly badass
Comments
9 Comments on How to add plugins and themes to a Wordpress site or blog
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How I Built My Membership Site Super Fast (And How You Can Too) on
Fri, 14th Aug 2009 4:57 pm
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Mike Cullen on
Mon, 17th Aug 2009 7:15 pm
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Johnny on
Mon, 17th Aug 2009 7:38 pm
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Mike Cullen on
Mon, 17th Aug 2009 9:20 pm
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rebecca on
Sun, 30th Aug 2009 3:28 pm
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Andi Putra on
Mon, 31st Aug 2009 4:35 am
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Johnny on
Tue, 1st Sep 2009 5:27 pm
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kate on
Mon, 28th Sep 2009 4:36 pm
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Johnny on
Mon, 28th Sep 2009 4:40 pm
[...] and it’s pretty straightforward on how to do the configuration and whatnot. Johnny also has a plugin-install tutorial for you here if you need extra help. You just create a memebership level for your product, set up a [...]
Hi Johnny—OK, I added “Contact Form 7″ to my site…or so it says. When I go to my site, it’s nowhere to be found. It’s ‘activated’ on my list of plugins…but where is it on my site? Or have I missed something with all of my knuckle-dragging?
Mike… it just gives you the easy capability to add the form. You still have to add it to a page. Go to “Contact form 7″ or whatever toward the bottom on the left in your admin console, and look in there for the code to insert the form. It’s like “[contact form=1][id=5]” or something. (Not exactly, but it’s in brackets, anyway.) Copy and paste that into one of your blog’s pages and the form will show up.
‘Tis a thing of beauty! Thanks!
I really wish I had heard about wordpress before I started blogging. It seems like a nice tool. And yes I am still on blogger and suffering for it. I don’t have the money to hire a va but I also don’t have the copious amounts of time I have had to spend doing va things – I write about things to do on a shoestring budget in my home town and would much rather be visiting places and writing about them than continuously fixing code.
Thanks for this. Very useful for beginners like my sis who just start blogging. Now I don’t need to explain anything to her. “Read this yourself, sis.” Yeah, that’s what I would say.
@Rebecca… you know, I DO have a Blogger to Wordpress migration service in my “services” section… [whistle]
@Andi… you’re welcome!
so what happens if you just automatically update a plugin and suddenly you have header errors and it doesnt even let you login to the admin console? do you just give up and cry? Or can your ISP get you in through a backdoor?
(i have a friend freaking out and figured others might benefit from the answer here!)
Well, don’t give up and cry. The files are still there; it’s just a bug that you don’t know yet how to fix. But the blog isn’t gone, no matter how it looks.
First thing to try is to go in via FTP and delete the files for the plugin that was updated.
Then you can try the hosting company’s tech support. Sometimes they’ll tell you they won’t offer support on third-party apps, but it’s worth a shot.
Then you can hire JBT.
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