Posts Tagged ‘plugins’
WP Admin Area Options
April 21, 2008 by Emily
Around the Web,Downloads
If you’ve already upgraded to WordPress 2.5, then you know that 2.5 brings a BIG change to the admin area. Automattic worked with a team from Happy Cog Studios to redesign the admin area for greater ease and usability. However, while this improvement may help users new to WordPress, people used to the old admin area may be having some issues acclimating to the new interface. In fact some “power users” downright hate it. While that’s a perfectly valid point of view, I consider myself a power user, and I actually really like the new interface. That’s not to say I love everything about it, though.
The great thing about WordPress and it’s big, wonderful community is that if there is something you are dissatisfied with, there’s probably someone else out there just like you. Unlike you, they may know how to write a plugin or a hack to fix it. In the past few weeks I’ve come across several of these fixes and I thought I’d highlight them.
CommentsHave you upgraded yet?
April 16, 2008 by Emily
Around the Web
WordPress 2.5 has been out for over 2 weeks, have you upgraded yet? I waited about a week to make sure there were no major issues right after the release, but as of this past weekend all my personal/business WP sites as well an a good portion of my client’s sites have been upgraded. If you haven’t upgraded yet, what are you waiting for?
I’ve come across several bloggers who are waiting for the release of 2.5.1. I can’t really blame them for this logic. It should fix all of the major bugs that have cropped up and by the time it comes out in two or three weeks time, plugin authors who were behind the times, should have finally upgraded their plugins. Normally, I might agree with them and for a moment, I even considered this myself, until I read this announcement on Technorati that “vulnerable” WordPress blogs are no longer being indexed. What constitutes a vulnerable blog? Anything that is NOT WordPress 2.5.
This announcement seemed kind of bullying to me at first: UPGRADE OR ELSE! But they have a point. There are valid security problems in older versions of WP. If you care about your site, then security should be your number 1 concern. I certainly don’t mean to post this to scare people or to say that there is anything wrong with using WordPress, but I know from years of first hand experience that MANY people do not take security seriously. I can promise you, as soon as your site has been hacked, this is something you are going to take seriously. A few days ago I upgraded a WordPress site that was still using version 1.5! That’s at least 2 years old and there’s really no excuse for it. If you don’t keep current you are pretty much inviting hackers to your website.
Beginners Guide to WordPress Plugins
January 14, 2008 by Emily
Tutorials
One of the biggest advantages of using WordPress is the ability to use plugins to expand the capabilities of your blog or website. Since WordPress has such a large community of plugin developers, it means that you can make your WordPress website do pretty much anything you want it to. If you’ve ever thought about a feature that you wanted in WordPress, chances are that if you look around, you’ll find someone who has created a plugin to integrate that feature.
The problem is that many people don’t know how to go about installing plugin or think they are not technologically inclined enough to be able to. But these days most of the plugins available for WordPress only require one or two steps to get working so anyone can do it.
If you read my other tutorial about Upgrading WordPress then you will be familiar with the basics. You will need an FTP client to connect to your web space. If your host used cPanel, you can also use the file manager and upload plugins from there. Most plugins are installed in the same place, a folder called ‘plugins’ inside the wp-content directory.
To activate or deactivate a plugin, you just need to log into your WP admin and find Plugins in the top menu. This page lists all installed plugins.
The really great thing about the newest version of WordPress is that it will keep track of most of your plugins and let you know if they need to be updated.
