Exploring the Plugins page

Before you start installing plugins on your site, it’s important for you to explore the Plugins page on your WordPress Dashboard and understand how to manage the plugins after you install them. Click the Installed Plugins link in the Plugins menu on your WordPress Dashboard to view the Plugins page shown in Figure 7-1.

The Plugins page is where you manage all the plugins you install on your WordPress site. By default, the Plugins page displays a full listing of all the WordPress plugins you currently have installed. You can filter the listing of plugins using the links shown directly below the Plugins page title:

• All: This is the default view for the Plugins page and shows a listing of all plugins currently installed on your WordPress website, whether they are active or not.
• Active: Clicking this link shows a list of the plugins that are currently activated and in use on your WordPress website.
• Inactive: Clicking this link changes the display and shows the list of plugins that are installed but not currently active. ( Note: This link displays on the Plugins page only if you have inactive plugins.)
• Recently Active: This link appears only if you have deactivated a plugin recently. It’s helpful if you know that you’ve deactivated a plugin, but cannot remember which one.
• Must Use: This link appears only if you have plugins installed in the /wp-content/mu-plugins folder. Must-Use plugins are standard WordPress plugins that need to be manually installed (usually by a developer) and do not give the site administrators the ability to remove or deactivate them from the Dashboard.
• Drop-Ins: A few select plugins actually have files that change the behavior of WordPress so substantially that it lets you know about it, just in case there’s a question later. These plugins drop files into the wp-content directory that modify the core settings of WordPress (mostly having to do with caching or other server-specific settings). These files don’t show up in the main plugin listing because they typically belong to other plugins. The Drop-Ins link appears only if you have drop-in plugins installed.

With a quick glance at the Plugins page, you can easily tell which plugins are active — and which aren’t — by the background color of each plugin listed. A blue background means that the plugin is active. A white background means that the plugin is not active. In Figure 7-1, the background of the Akismet plugin is white and the background of the Hello Dolly plugin is blue. Akismet isn’t active, but Hello Dolly is (the figures in this book are black and white, so you cannot see the blue color — but you can see the different darker/lighter shades in Figure 7-1).

You can mass-manage your plugins on the Plugins page. You can deactivate all your plugins simultaneously by selecting the box to the left of each plugin name and then selecting Deactivate in the Bulk Actions drop-down menu at the top or bottom of the page (as shown in Figure 7-1). Then click the Apply button. Likewise, you can activate, upgrade, or delete the plugins listed by selecting Activate, Update, or Delete in the Bulk Actions drop-down menu. To quickly select all your plugins with one click, select the box to the left of the Plugin heading on the Plugins page.

The Plugins page displays plugins in two columns, which give details for each plugin:

• Plugin: This column lists the plugin name so that you can find it easily when browsing the Plugins page. Directly beneath the plugin name, you see a few links for easy plugin management:

  • Activate: This link appears below the title of only inactive plugins. Click the link to activate a plugin.
  • Deactivate: This link appears below the title of only active plugins. Click the link to deactivate a plugin.
  • Delete: This link appears below the title of only inactive plugins. Click the link to delete the plugin from your site. (See more about this topic in the “Uninstalling Plugins” section later in this chapter.)
  • Edit: This link appears below all listed plugins, whether they are active or not. Click the link to visit the Edit Plugins page. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can edit the individual plugin files.

  Sometimes, a plugin will have a separate settings page; in that case, an additional link labeled Settings is displayed underneath the plugin name. Clicking that link takes you to the settings page for that plugin.

• Description: This column lists a description for the plugin. Depending on the plugin, you may also see brief instructions on using the plugin. Directly below the description are the version number of the plugin, the plugin author’s name, and a link to the website where you can read more information about the plugin.

Discovering the one-click plugin update

For a lot of reasons, mainly security reasons and feature updates, always use the most up-to-date versions of the plugins in your blog. With everything you have to do every day, how can you possibly keep up with knowing whether the plugins you’re using have been updated?

You don’t have to. WordPress does it for you.

Figure 7-2 shows an out-of-date version (2.5.9) of Akismet installed. WordPress notifies you when a new update is available for a plugin in four different ways, as shown in Figure 7-2:

• Dashboard Updates link: The Updates link below the Dashboard menu displays a circle with a white number. The number indicates how many plugins have updates available. In Figure 7-2, you see that there is one plugin with an update available on my site. Click the Updates link to see which plugins have updates available.
• Toolbar: When there is a new update available, a small icon appears in the toolbar at the top of your Dashboard to the right of your site title, as shown in Figure 7-2.
• Plugins menu title: The Plugins menu title also displays a circle with a number. As with the Updates link, the number indicates how many plugins have updates available, as shown in Figure 7-2.
• Plugins page: Figure 7-2 shows the Plugins page. Below the Akismet plugin you see a message that says There is a new version of Akismet available. View version 3.1 details or update now.

WordPress gives you not only a message that a new version of the plugin is available, but also a link to a page where you can download the new version, or a link that you can click to update the plugin right there and then — WordPress’s one-click plugin update.

Click the Update Now link, and WordPress grabs the new files off the WordPress.org server, uploads them to your plugins directory, deletes the old plugin, and activates the new one. (If a plugin is deactivated at the time it’s updated, WordPress gives you the option to activate the plugin after your update process is completed.) Figure 7-3 shows the Updated message on the Plugins page that you see after the plugin has been upgraded.

WordPress notifies you of an out-of-date plugin and provides you with the one-click upgrade function only for plugins that are in the official WordPress Plugin Directory (https://wordpress.org/plugins). If a plugin you are using is not listed in the directory, the notification and one-click upgrade function won’t be present for that plugin.

Whatever you do, do not ignore the plugin update messages that WordPress gives you. Plugin developers usually release new versions because of security problems or vulnerabilities that require an upgrade. If you notice that an upgrade is available for a plugin you’re using, stop what you’re doing and upgrade it — it takes only a few seconds.

For the automatic plugin upgrade to work, your plugin directory (/wp-content/plugins) must be writable on your web server, which means that you should have set permissions of 755 or 777 (depending on your web server configuration). See Chapter 3 for information about changing file permissions on your web server, or contact your web-hosting provider for assistance.

Incorporating Akismet

I touch on Akismet a few times throughout this book. It’s my humble opinion that Akismet is the mother of all plugins and that no WordPress blog is complete without a fully activated version. Apparently WordPress agrees, because the plugin has been packaged in every WordPress software release since version 2.0. Akismet was created by the folks at Automattic — the same folks who bring you the JetPack plugin. Akismet is the answer to comment and trackback spam.

To use the plugin, follow these steps:

1. On the Plugins page, click the Activate link under the Akismet plugin name.

   A box appears at the top of the page, saying Activate your Akismet account. Almost done — activate your account and say goodbye to comment spam. (See Figure 7-4.)

2. Click the Activate Your Akismet Account button.

   Clicking this link takes you to the Akismet page in your WordPress Dashboard, where you can create an API key, required in order to use the Akismet plugin.

3. Click the Get Your API Key button.

   This opens the Akismet website in your browser window at http://akismet.com/wordpress.

4. Click the Get an Akismet API Key button.

   This opens the signup page on the Akismet website. Because Akismet is hooked into the WordPress.com service, if you already have a WordPress.com account, click the I Already Have a WordPress.com Account! link; otherwise, fill in the text fields and provide your email address, desired username, and password to create one.

   After you have done this, Akismet requests that you authorize your account with Akismet — click OK.

5. Enter the URL of the site where you’ll use Akismet and select a plan:
   • Enterprise: $50/month for people who own multiple WordPress-powered websites and want to use Akismet on all of them.
   • Business: $5/month for people who own one small, nonpersonal (or business) WordPress-powered site.
   • Personal: $0–$48/year for people who own one small, personal, WordPress-powered blog. You can choose to pay nothing ($0), or if you’d like to contribute a little cash toward the cause of combating spam, you can opt to spend up to $48 per year for your Akismet key subscription.

6. Select and pay for (if needed) your Akismet key.

   After you’ve gone through the signup process, Akismet provides you with an API key. Copy that key by selecting it with your mouse pointer, right-clicking, and selecting Copy.

7. When you have your API key, go to the Akismet page by clicking the Akismet link in the Settings menu on your WordPress Dashboard.
8. Enter your Akismet API key in the text box labeled Manually Enter an API Key, and then click the Use This Key button to fully activate the Akismet plugin.

On the Akismet configuration page, after you’ve entered and saved your key (see Figure 7-5), you also have two options that you can select to further manage your spam protection:

• Comments: Select the Show the Number of Approved Comments Beside Each Comment Author check box to tell Akismet to display the number of approved comments each comment author has on your blog.
• Strictness: By default, Akismet always puts detected spam email in the spam folder for your review. You can, however, select the Silently Discard the Worst and Most Pervasive Spam So I Never See It radio button.

Akismet catches spam and throws it into a queue, holding the spam for 15 days and then deleting it from your database. It’s probably worth your while to check the Akismet Spam page once a week to make sure that the plugin hasn’t captured any legitimate comments or trackbacks.

You can rescue those nonspam-captured comments and trackbacks by doing the following (after you’ve logged on to your WordPress Dashboard):

1. Click the Comments menu.

   The Comments page appears, displaying a list of the most recent comments on your blog.

2. Click the Spam link.

   The Comments page now displays all spam comments that the plugin caught.

3. Browse through the list of spam comments, looking for any legitimate comments or trackbacks.

4. If you locate one that’s legitimate, click the Not Spam link that appears directly below the entry when you hover your mouse pointer over it.

   The comment is marked as legitimate. In other words, you don’t consider this comment to be spam. The comment is then approved and published on your blog.

Check your spam filter often. I just found four legitimate comments caught in my spam filter and was able to de-spam them, releasing them from the binds of Akismet and unleashing them upon the world. Check out Chapter 5 for more information on managing comments in WordPress.

The folks at Automattic did a fine thing with Akismet. Since the emergence of Akismet, I’ve barely had to think about comment or trackback spam, except for the few times a month I check my Akismet spam queue.

Saying Hello Dolly

Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, developed the Hello Dolly plugin. Anyone who follows the development of WordPress knows that Matt is a huge jazz fan. How do we know this? Every single release of WordPress is named after some jazz great. One of the most recent releases of the software, for example, is named Parker, after jazz great Charles Parker; another release was named Coltrane, after the late American jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane.

So, knowing this, it isn’t surprising that Mullenweg developed a plugin named Hello Dolly. Here’s the description of it that you see in the Plugins page on your Dashboard:

This is not just a plugin, it symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong: “Hello, Dolly.” When activated, you will randomly see a lyric from “Hello, Dolly” in the upper right of your admin screen on every page.

Is it necessary? No. Is it fun? Sure!

Activate the Hello Dolly plugin on the Plugins page on your WordPress Dashboard. When you’ve activated it, your WordPress blog greets you with a different lyric from the song “Hello, Dolly!” each time.

If you want to change the lyrics in this plugin, you can edit them by clicking the Edit link to the right of the Hello Dolly plugin on the Plugins page. The Plugin Editor opens and lets you edit the file in a text editor. Make sure that each line of the lyric has its own line in the plugin file. This plugin may not seem very useful to you and, in fact, it may not be useful to the majority of WordPress users, but the real purpose behind the plugin is to provide WordPress plugin developers with a simple example of how to write a plugin.

This book does not cover topics on how to create your own plugin, but if you are interested in that, you may want to check out my other book, WordPress All-in-One For Dummies (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), which covers that topic in detail.

Finding and downloading the files

The first step in using plugins is locating the one you want to install. The absolute best place to find WordPress plugins is the official WordPress Plugins Directory found at https://wordpress.org/plugins where, at the time of this writing, you will find over 36,700 plugins available for download.

To find the Twitter plugin, follow these steps:

1. Go to the official WordPress Plugin Directory, located at https://wordpress.org/plugins.
2. In the search box at the top of the Plugin Directory home page, enter the keyword Twitter and then click the Search Plugins button.

3. Locate the Twitter plugin on the search results page (see Figure 7-7) and click the plugin name.

   The Twitter plugin page opens in the WordPress Plugin Directory, where you find a description of the plugin as well as other information about the plugin (see Figure 7-8). For example, in Figure 7-8, take note of the important information on the right side of the page:

   • Download Version: This is the download link that you click to download the plugin, and the number shown in this area is the most recent version number of the plugin.
   • Requires: This tells you what version of WordPress you need to successfully use this plugin. For example, Figure 7-8 shows that the Twitter plugin requires WordPress version 3.9 or higher; this means that this plugin doesn’t work with WordPress versions lower than 3.9. Helpful!
   • Compatible Up To: This tells you what version of WordPress this plugin is compatible up to. For example, if this section tells you that the plugin is compatible up to version 4.2, this means that you usually can’t use the plugin with versions higher than 4.2. I say usually because the plugin developer may not update the information in this section — especially if the plugin files themselves haven’t changed. The best way to check is to download the plugin, install it, and see whether it works! (Figure 7-8 shows that the Twitter plugin is compatible up to WordPress version 4.1.1.)
   • Last Updated: This displays the date that the plugin was last updated by the author.
   • Active Installs: This number tells you how many times this plugin has been downloaded and used by other WordPress users.
   • Ratings: With a rating system of 1–5 stars (1 being the lowest, 5 being the highest), you can see how other WordPress users have rated this plugin.

4. Click the Download button for the plugin version you want to download.

   If you’re using Internet Explorer, click the Download button and a dialog box opens, asking whether you want to open or save the file. Click Save to save the zip file to your hard drive, and remember where you saved it.

   If you’re using Mozilla Firefox, click the Download button and a dialog box opens, asking what Firefox should do with the file. Select the Save File radio button and then click OK to save it to your hard drive. Again, remember where you saved it.

   For other browsers, follow the download instructions in the corresponding dialog box.

5. Locate the file on your hard drive and open it with your favorite decompression program.

   If you’re unsure how to use your decompression program, refer to the documentation available with the program.

6. Unpack (decompress) the plugin files you downloaded for the Twitter plugin.

Reading the instructions

Frequently, the plugin developer includes a readme file inside the zip file. Do what the title of the file says: Read it. Often, it contains the exact documentation and instructions that you will find on the plugin developer’s page.

Make sure that you read the instructions carefully and follow them correctly. Ninety-nine percent of WordPress plugins have great documentation and instructions from the plugin developer. If you don’t follow the instructions correctly, the best scenario is that the plugin just doesn’t work on your blog. At worst, the plugin creates all sorts of ugly errors, requiring you to start the plugin installation over from step one.

You can open readme.txt files in any text-editor program, such as Notepad or WordPad on a PC or TextEdit on a Mac.

In the case of the Twitter plugin, the readme.txt file contains information regarding the requirements of the plugin and useful information on how to use the plugin once you have it installed and activated on your site.

Every plugin is different in terms of where the plugin files are uploaded and what configurations and setup are necessary to make the plugin work on your site. Read the installation instructions very carefully and follow those instructions to the letter to install the plugin correctly on your site.

Uploading a new plugin

To install the Twitter plugin via the WordPress Dashboard, follow these easy steps:

1. Click the Add New link in the Plugins menu.

   This opens the Install Plugins page on your Dashboard.

2. Click the Upload Plugin link at the top of the Install Plugins page.

   The resulting page gives you an interface for uploading a plugin in zip format.

3. Click the Choose File button.

   In the resulting File Upload dialog box, you can locate the zip file for the plugin you’d like to install. In this case, the file is twitter.1.0.1.zip (see Figure 7-9). Click the file to select it and then click the Open button to return to the Install Plugins page.

4. Click the Install Now button.

   WordPress uploads the plugin’s zip file into the /wp-content/plugins/ folder on your web server, unpacks it, and installs it. Figure 7-10 shows the Installing Plugin page with messages for you during and after the (hopefully successful) installation.

Activating the plugin

All plugins listed on the Plugins page are either active or inactive (except the Drop-In plugins, which are active by default). When you want to activate an inactive plugin, follow these easy steps (in this case, you are activating the Twitter plugin that you installed in the previous section):

1. Click the Installed Plugins link on the Plugins menu.

   The Plugins page opens, listing all the plugins installed in your WordPress site.

2. Locate the Twitter plugin.

   If you have a lot of plugins installed on your WordPress website, you can narrow your search by clicking the Inactive link, which lists the currently inactive plugins.

3. Click the Activate link below the plugin name.

   The Plugins page refreshes, and the Twitter plugin now appears as an active plugin on the page.

If you’ve followed all these steps in your own website, congratulations — you now have the Twitter plugin installed. Great job!