Here we show you how to quickly and easily find and add plugins to your self-hosted WordPress website.

NOTE: This guide has us install an important feature to the backend of your site that speeds up your navigation. Highly Recommended!

From the Dashboard after logging in:

1. Click on the Plugins tab. (it’s faster if you click on the down arrow that appears instead of the text link)

2. Select Add New.

3. From the Install Plugins page, you can browse all the plugins within the WordPress.org directory using either Keywords, Plugin Authors, or Tags. In addition we can Upload a zip file or, show only Featured, Popular, Newest or Recently Updated plugins.

4. Enter the exact name of the plugin into the Term dropdown field (i.e. Keywords). See screen shot for example.

COPY and PASTE the name below exactly for accuracy.

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu

5. Press the Search Plugins button.

6. The plugin we are after should be at the top of the list of results.

7. Click the Install link on the right and accept the request WP gives you.

8. WP will ask if you want to Activate the plugin.

We’re done and ready for plugin configuration!

NOTE: Most often WordPress plugin options show up in the Settings tab, but it can vary.

What It Does: Allows you to quickly and easily, search for and insert YouTube movies, royalty free images from Flickr, Wikipedia links, Google searches and even links from your own site, into your posts and pages.

Insights uses a dynamic AJAX interface which loads search results in seconds, all within the WordPress posting page!

Who Needs It: Anyone that has a self-hosted WordPress website.

Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/insights

Author: Vladimir Prelovac

Instructions

To add a YouTube Video:

1. Position your cursor where you want the video to appear.
2. Click the Videos button within the Insights box and in the Search field enter the Title of the video.For a more specific search you may want to paste in the actual videos title from YouTube. Like most search, the more keywords you use the more your results will refine.
3. The window will magically expand and show you the search results.
4. Click on a video thumbnail and it will open up and allow you play the video.
5. Click the Add Video button to insert the movie into your post or page.

To add an Image from Flickr:

1. Click the Image button
2. Enter a search term or name and press Search
3. The page will window will automagically expand to show image results from Filckr.
4. You can choose the image size from the drop-down.
5. Click the image you want to insert it into your post.
6. You can then highlight the image again and click Unlink (link defaults to the larger image on Flickr) or align it with the text aiignment buttons.

To add a link from Wikipedia:

1. Click the Wikipedia button
2. Enter a search term or name
3. Clicking the text link will take you to the page in a new window.
4. Highlight some text in your document.
5. Click the small Pen Link button next to the link you want in the results window.

You can even search your own site with the My Blog button. Very handy!

To initiate the search you can also press return on your keyboard.

Video Screencast Training

Screenshots:

Shopp

What It Does: Allows you to sell both shipped and digital products or services from your WordPress website. It offers a variety of different payment gateways to suit many nationalities and requirements. All major gateways such as PayPal are supported.

Who Needs It: Anyone that wants a serious e-commerce business.

Link: http://shopplugin.net

Author: Jon Davis

After much searching and in some cases praying,

Shopp e-commerce plugin wins the WordPress e-commerce wars! (In our humble but well informed opinion)

In the browser wars just after the rise of the internet, Microsoft managed to intimidate their way to the lead briefly. But the damage was done and they went on to become market leaders (obviously).

Fortunately on the internet their will always be healthy competition, and we have innovators such as Mozilla and most prominently Apple.

So here we have a Mac user creating software for WordPress. Yay!

Here are some of the main features:

• Smoothly integrates into the WordPress 2.7 interface.
• Very efficient code means a swift buying experience for your visitors.
• Flexible setup and product display options.
• Sell digital and shipped products together.
• Good support and upgrading options.

This short video Screencast will show you how to upload plugins (or anything for that matter) using Cpanel.

Cpanel is a very common admin backend system that comes with most hosting packages.

In this case we want to upload and install the WP-Easy Uploader plugin. This one plugin gives us the ability to upload anythign to our WordPress blog. Plugins, Themes and anything in fact.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-easy-uploader/

This one plugin allows you to upload and install many other plugins and themes from within the WordPress admin interface. Very cool!

Geeks basically, that make really cool new features available by creating little applications that run within the structure of WordPress.

Hot Tip: Find new plugins and themes fast! Try our new Google WordPress search engine page.

Want to add video from YouTube and Quicktime movies to your site? Try the Vipers Video quicktags Plugin. Maybe you want to make sure the email addresses you display on your page can’t be harvested by spam bots. Go for the DBD EMail encoder.

This 5 minute screencast will show you the most elegant expedient way to try out new plugins on your site.

Keep in mind that some (not many) of these plugins require some coding experience too.

2 Plugins feature in this Screencast:

• WP-Easy Uploader – allows you to upload anything to your WordPress web space, try out plugins or themes and upload media.
• Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu – gives you the quick drop down menus for WordPress 2.6.5 and earlier.

Installing a new plugin goes as follows:

1. Find the plugin you are after by using our Google WordPress search engines on this site. Go to http://effectiveclassywebsites.com/wordpress-search/
2. Find the download link on the WordPress.org website.
3. Right-Click on this link and choose Copy Link Location (in Firefox). This will copy the url to the plugin file to your memory.
4. Go to your WordPress Dashboard and select Manage > Upload Files.
5. Paste into the From URL field by Right-Clicking and choose Paste.
6. In destination, choose plugin. Options can generally be left alone.
7. Press Upload!
8. Go to the plugins page and activate your new plugin.
9. Make any settings and options changes you need to operate the plugin.

If you find this training useful, visit the subscriptions page where you can download all our free video screencasts via iTunes.

There are 4 Chapters in this Quicktime movie. They are:

1. Adding Images
2. Managing Galleries
3. Adding a New Gallery
4. The Next Gen HTML Button

Widgets are blocks of content that make up your sidebar or sidebars depending on the Theme you are using. To re-arrange the order of sidebar Widgets click and drag them then press Save.

Adding plugins will add more widgets. Explore more widgets on the WordPress website right here.

Comments are a fun way to start a dialogue with your readers.

Create something of value and ask for peoples involvement to refine your ideas. or you can use various plugins to add features to the comments process.

This video training will show you how to setup ,edit and delete comments on your WordPress website.

This video requires Quicktime for Mac and PC. Download it here.

NOTE: The Author of a particular page or post determines who is sent the Comments email notification. Make sure that the Authors are correct AND that you have a correct email address in Users > My Profile.

Get the latest Quicktime screencast downloads. Sign up for free subscription in the top right of your screen.