how to

First off, thank you to everyone for your patience. I took two weeks off of the bootcamp. One week due to lack of perceived interest on my part and another because I… erm… forgot. Whoops! But I’m back this week with talk of that most mystical feature of WordPress, the one that more often than not draws people over from their safe cocoons on Blogspot… PLUGINS.

They’re at the same time scary and exciting. Exciting because they allow you to do all sorts of fun things from displaying blog post titles in fancy custom fonts to inserting pictures right from your flickr account without ever having to leave your “Write Post” screen to beating down nasty spam comments so you never even have to look at them. Plainly put? Plugins can do virtually ANYTHING. (Well, maybe not wash your dishes for you, but that might feature in an upcoming WordPress version.)

First… the basics. You need to have an ability to upload files to your blog directory on your server. This means plugins aren’t a part of WordPress.com. Whether you use FTP or your host’s file manager upload utility, it doesn’t matter. Just as long as you can upload files.

Next, you need to find plugins that will work best for you and your blog. You can find a lot of awesome ones at the WordPress Plugin Directory. The bonus to this site (other than it being “official”) is that when the developer releases an update for the plugins you downloaded from here, you’ll have the ability to “automatically” upgrade your plugin. But I’ll get into that later. Another good place to look for plugins is googling “best wordpress plugins”. You’ll get tons of results for blog posts that discuss favorite plugins. After a while, you’ll see the same 10 or so plugins discussed and you’ll know those are ones you probably want to have. Just beware: some of these posts may be several years old and may discuss plugins that don’t exist anymore or don’t work for the most recent version of WordPress.

Once you have a plugin you’d like to add to your blog, download it to your desktop and then (since most plugins come in .zip format), unzip the file using your favorite zip utility. You’ll most often have a folder so if you use FTP, chances are you can just upload that entire folder as is to your “wp-content/plugins” folder on your blog server. This article over on WordPress.org explains far better than I ever could the basics of installing plugins, so check it out if you need more assistance (or feel free to contact me, if I’m not busy I could lend a hand).

Once your plugin is uploaded, go to your “Plugins” page in the admin interface (hint: it’s next to “Settings” on the righthand side in the latest version). You’ll see a page that looks something like this:

Down at the bottom of the page, you’ll see your new plugin listed and there’ll be an “Activate” link to the right of the plugin title.

Click it and voila! Sometimes plugins will have their own settings that need to be tweaked, so just look under “Settings” in your admin panel and the plugin should be listed there. As always, refer to the plugin’s webpage (often the name of the plugin on the Plugins page links to the plugin webpage) for support if you need help with anything.

All that said, I have an even EASIER way to install plugins (which is probably I have so many of them on this blog). I use a plugin called the One Click Plugin Updater. It requires some fiddling with folder permissions as well as the standard upload I detailed above, but it is WORTH IT in the end. What it does is makes it so you don’t have to FTP or upload another file again in order to add plugins to your blog (themes too, but we’ll cover that in another Bootcamp).

Once installed, you just go to your “Plugins” page (like you see above) and select “Install a Plugin” from the submenu. On the page you’ll have the option to “Install From URL” or “Install from File”.

For the first option, you just need to copy the link to the zipfile you wish to to install in the “URL” field and click “Install” (obviously, this is a plugin not a theme so you can ignore the “Type” field). That is all. You will then see a message like this:

You can either click the “Activate the plugin” link there or go activate it fron the Plugins page like I showed above.

The other option on the “Install a Plugin” page is to install from a file. It looks like this:

In this case, you can take a plugin zipfile that you have downloaded to your computer and browse to it. Once selected, click install and voila! After that, it’s the same process as above to activate the plugin and you’re on your way.

BUT, it can be even EASIER. If you use Firefox, there is an add-on that goes along with this plugin called the “One-Click Installer for WP“. it allows you to right click on a plugin download link and install directly to your blog, avoiding even the “Install a Plugin” page.

After you click on that, a window open in your browser displaying the “Install a Plugin” page and this message:

Once you select “Yes, Install It”, the rest of the activation process is the same as above. COULD IT BE ANY EASIER? I really don’t think so. So run, do not walk, and get this plugin for yourself. If you need another reason? It gives you messages when a plugin has an update available a la WordPress’s annoying update reminder with one important difference: there is a link to automatically download and install and activate the updated plugin all in one click. NICE.

Do you still need somewhere to start? Then I’m going to list out the Plugins I Cannot Live Without. These are plugins that I always make sure will work with new versions of WordPress before I upgrade because I cannot fathom having my blog without them.

And these plugins are new (and some old) favorites of mine that are quickly becoming some of my favorites:

And there you have it. Plugins! God bless them. They’re just fabulous.

Next week I’ll probably cover Designing WordPress, unless you all would rather I cover another topic first. So tell me: 1) What’s your favorite plugin? (or if you don’t have a WordPress blog, what kind of plugin would you like to have?) and 2) What would you like to see me cover next time?

Class dismissed!

As promised, here is my WordPress Bootcamp Series. This series is inspired by your questions and questions I’ve seen many bloggers have over the years and by a desire to convert every user of Blogger to switch to WordPress already. I have dreams and goals, people. Actually, if I can help just one person in their quest towards WordPress nirvana, I will consider this series a raging success.

Today, we’re going to start with the basics. Getting Started. This particular installment is going to assume that you have already made the decision to move to WordPress (I’ll get to the whining begging pleading convincing at a later date). But making the decision is only part of the battle. Where do you go from there? How do you go from, “I want a WordPress blog!” to actually having a WordPress blog?

Get a Domain Name

It’s pretty simple, actually. And it starts with a domain name. Now, some people who use Blogger have a domain name already that is mapped to their Blogger account. But most do not. So where do you start? Well you need to think of a good domain name. For most people, this is the name of their blog. Whichever you choose, you need to make sure it’s available. Most domain name registrars will let you know before purchase if your domain is available with a simple lookup utility.

I use NameCheap because… it’s cheap (hello, it’s in the name!). It used to be $8.88 a year but it went up like fifty cents or something like that. Big deal. So you have your name and you set up an account and you purchase it. Now what??

Finding a Host

Now you need a host. You need to find a web host. Now, a simple Google search will show you that the possibilities are endless. What do you choose? What features of a host should you look for? What should you stay away from? ACK! I changed my mind! I’m scared!

Never fear. I’m here to help.

I’ve worked with a lot of web hosts in the last several years. Back when I did blog design, I had the misfortune to work with some really deplorable web hosts, actually. One thing I can tell you without hesitation? STAY AWAY FROM YAHOO HOSTING. It looks so easy. They promise you easy, no-fuss hosting of your blog. “Perfect!” you think. That’s just what you want. RESIST, I say. I beg you. Save yourself the headache, PLEASE.

The problem is that Yahoo Hosting is too easy. And there are a lot of features that, while they seem to be for advanced users, that having them makes life easier for anyone using WordPress. And Yahoo doesn’t offer a lot of these features. So stay away from it.

I use HostGator. And yes, that is an affiliate link. Which means I get $$ if you click that link and then sign up for hosting. I’ve been with HostGator for years now. I first signed up with them back in 2003. They are an insanely easy host to work with. Anyhow, when you sign up, you give them the domain name you registered for before. They’ll in turn give you some “nameserver addresses”.

You need to go back to wherever you registered your domain name (in my case, NameCheap) and log into your account and find where you can “manage” your domain name. Then you should find a link somewhere for editing nameserver or DNS information. If you’re having trouble, ask customer support and they should point you in the right direction. You put in the new “nameserver addresses” and voila! You may need to wait a few hours for everything to “catch up” but your domain name will now point to your newly purchased web site! Woo hoo!

You are also given a “CPanel” with login information. CPanel looks an awful lot like this:

CPanel lets you do just about anything, easily, to your site. You can control email addresses, check stats, upload files, add in scripts and gizmos and doo-dads and all sorts of other stuff I don’t even know about. At the very bottom of the CPanel screen is an icon that is called “Fantastico”. And fantastic it is.

You see, from here you can pick any of the goodies listed there on the left side and install them on your web site JUST LIKE THAT. Literally, it’s filling out a few blanks and clicking a button. It doesn’t get any easier, folks. You’ve got everything from photo albums to message boards to shopping carts to content management systems and… blogs. Yes, blogs. And look what we have here?

Installing WordPress

Woo hoo! This is how I first learned about WordPress, actually. I have mentioned before that I started out on Blogger and then switched a few days later to WordPress. I already had my web site here and I got to looking around at Fantastico. I checked out the other “blog” programs provided but none of them seemed as good as WordPress. So I went with that. I knew nothing at the time about Movable Type. I went with WordPress because it was easy. SO EASY.

Seriously, this is what it looks like. In the first blank, if you want your blog to be your domain name, you just leave it blank. If you want your blog to be at http://yourdomain.com/blog, then you would put “blog” in that blank. Make sense? Just make sure the directory doesn’t already exist (which means, don’t make a “folder” or anything else with that name on the account before this step or it won’t work. If you don’t understand, then don’t worry, it probably won’t apply to you).

Next, you pick out a username and password. Easy as pie, right? Just be sure to remember it! Write it down somewhere and don’t lose it!

In the next section, “Base configuration”, you pick out a nickname. For instance, if your login username from the previous section was “admin” but you want to sign your posts “Joe Bob”, you would put “Joe Bob” in the nickname spot. Then you put in an email address. This could be the email that your web site is tied to or your gmail account or wherever you’d like to receive notices when people make comments, etc and so forth.

Site name and description should be fairly obvious. For instance, my blog the site name would be “slackermama . com” and the description would be “making little kids cry since 1999″. Yours could be “Mommy Needs a Time Out” and “going crazy since 2004″ or somesuch. Make sense?

After you fill all that out, just click “install” and voila! You get another screen that is basically an “are you sure” sort of screen and you need to click a button to finish the install. And then you’re done. You have WordPress! You are given the URL to your admin account which is basically your domain plus “wp-admin” (for instance: http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin). Use your newly minted username and password to log in and now you can write posts, add links, manage the design and add plugins and… well, the sky is the limit!

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. All that good stuff is for the weeks to come. Right now, the important thing is we know how to get started with WordPress. Next week we’ll learn what to do with it once we have it! In the meantime, keep the questions coming!