How to install Your Wordpress Plugins & Themes

What is Wordpress Plugins?

In order to log into your wordpress blog go to: www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/ and you'll be prompted to enter the username and password you chose. It's all very user friendly and relatively self explanatory. 

If you want to learn the basics before we move on then I recommend you look it up on Google. There's plenty of useful free information out there. And I'm not going to waste peoples time by going into the basics of wordpress here. Instead, I'll show you everything you need to know as we go along. 

Now, there are two things you need to do to your website before we even start to write anything and they are: Download and configure the 2 essential plugins, and choose a `theme' for your site. 

We won't go into the latter here, because it fits in much better in the next chapter: Creating your killer presell story and writing the content. 

So, let's focus on the plugins for now. There are HUNDREDS of free plugins available to enhance your wordpress site but I never really use any but these two. 

Feel free to browse the selection available at your leisure, but personally, I can never be bothered. 

The 2 plugins you NEED are: All in one SEO pack ­ Helps to optimize your blog for search engines Google XML Sitemaps ­ Creates a sitemap for Google which helps SEO once again. 

Don't worry about what each of them do or how to configure them at this point of in time because we'll get onto that later. For now you just need to install them on your blog. And what follows is a step by step guide on how to do it.

How to install your  wordpress plugins & themes

  
I say themes as well because it follows the same process. You won't have a theme yet but just come back and view this section when you want to install one.

Step 1:

Click the `Add New' option under the Plugins section. 

Step 2:

Type in the 2 main plugins you require. First let's search for the All in One Seo Pack, once typed in hit the Search plugin button.

Step 3:
  

Locate the correct plugin, in this case we select the All in One SEO pack and hit the install Now link as show above.

Step 4:

Wordpress will then ask you if you are sure you want to install this plugin, hit the ok or yes button. 

Step 5:

You simply hit the activate plugin link to finish off installing and activating your plugin. Now repeat the steps for the `Google XML Sitemaps' plugin.

Alternatively you can also install your plugins via FTP. Step #1:

Download the plugins from the site and unzip them. All in one SEO pack ­ Helps to optimize your blog for search engines . 

Download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ 
Google XML Sitemaps ­ Creates a sitemap for Google which helps SEO once again. Download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

Step #2: Go to your CPanel account and select unlimited FTP. Or use whatever FTP program you use normally.

Step 3: This step is for guys who haven't used FTP before. 

Unlimited FTP is a File Transfer Protocol program (don't worry about the jargon) that basically allows you to upload and download files from your computer to your web server and thus, your website. What you'll see when you open unlimited FTP is a screen similar to this:

On the left you've got your computer and you can browse through all of your files and the on the right you've got your web server. You don't need to worry about any files except public_html. So click that as shown in the diagram

Step #4: If this is your first and only website on the hosting account what you'll see now will look something like this:

Click on wp-content.

Step #5: You will now see this on your screen.

Notice how on the left hand side I've browsed to where I unzipped the plugin/theme. And on the right we will now select plugins, but if you wanted to install a theme (which we will do later) you'd need to click on the themes folder to install inside.

Step #6: Once inside the plugins folder you should see this:

Now all you need to do is click upload and voila: The plugin will be uploaded to your wordpress blog. Now that you've done it for the all in one SEO pack, browse to where you unzipped the sitemap plugin on the left hand side and click upload again. When we install a theme you will do exactly the same process but in the themes folder.

This is all a lot easier to understand in video format, so...

And Watch me Create a Wordpress Blog From Scratch and Install a Theme and Both Plugins.

Okay then. You should now have your blog installed. In the next chapter we're going to talk about how to presell your visitors to maximise your profits.