WordPress blog pages provide each user with impressive options in regards to the design template they can choose along with further functionality inside their blog in the form of plugins. These plugins are designed, maintained, and endorsed by the WordPress community and could add  increased layers of functionality and form to the blog.

What are they?

Anyone with WordPress blogs for their accountant websites can add plugins, and there are a multitude of uses and benefits to installing them; both for yourself and for your readers. The plugin could do something as simple as adding a Google Search option to your site or something as advanced as backing up your WordPress directory automatically on a scheduled basis, ensuring you are covered in case of disaster. People use them often because they add a lot of fun, interesting and useful features that would otherwise require a lot of code writing.

Where are they?

There are several places you can go to find plugins. One of them is within the admin panel of your blog. Your admin panel has a menu item called Plugins.  To install one, simply click install! There is also a WordPress page that is devoted to listing plugin options.  You can search for all different types to narrow down what you’re looking for, and you can also view the most popular plugins.

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

Downloading plugins from here requires an extra step.  You’ll need to locate the downloaded file, then unzip it before you can upload it to your WordPress blog.

Both options are fairly easy and the only potential difference would lie with the security settings of the server that is hosting your blog.

Now what?

Once you have found the plugin you would like to use, and if you installed it via the WordPress interface, you will need to activate it under the Plugin menu item.

If you downloaded the plugin to your computer, you will have to unzip it and then upload it to the wp-content/plugins folder. Once you upload the plugin folder to the above directory, you need to go to your plugin menu and activate it.

Some plugins will work immediately, others require that you add code to your template. Additionally, some others require different adjustments aside from coding that need to be completed before the plugin will work. You’ll know which method you’ll need to follow after you activate the plugin, and if you have any questions about what needs to be done, you can always check the plugin authors’ site which will be available from a link within the Plugins menu.

How do I know it’s working?

Don’t forget to confirm that your plugin is working properly. You can sometimes test your plugin right from the plugin settings menu.  Otherwise, simply go to your blog page and test it from there.

Once you have verified the plugin is working, you’re all set and you can continue to install and activate any other plugins you would like!

Of course, there is always the possibility that your plugin won’t work right away.  If this happens, double check that you didn’t miss any steps, and you may need to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress for some plugins to work. You should also review the instructions on the plugin authors’ site.

Are there highly suggested plugins?

There are a lot of people that will tout the utility of certain plugins and of course if you have a specific goal in mind for your blog, there are plugins you will want to run, but everything is subjective. You should install what you feel is right for your blog.

A few I tend to use are W3 Total Cache, HeadSpace: WordPress SEO Made Simple and Gravity forms. These serve a specific purpose for all of my blogs that I hope to make highly relevant, easily searchable and search engine friendly, and I’ve had the best luck with this “basic” package.

I think it’s also very important to back up my blog, just in case.  For that, I use WP-DBManager, which can even email my WordPress database to me on a daily basis.

I’m also not alone in hoping that a lot of my readers will comment on my blogs, so I also choose to use tools that help prevent and block spam comments.

Finally, do you need Plugins?

HECK NO!

Just because WordPress and numerous creators supply us with hundreds of plugin options doesn’t mean you need to use any of them.  WordPress works just fine without them.

Plugins are given to you to heighten your blog’s current tools, however if you’re content with your blog the way it is, then you can completely bypass the plugins. For people who need extra functionality from a blog or for users who lack the time to build, the plugins afforded to the WordPress society are a wonderful energy saving tool.