How To Install Plugins on a WordPress Blog

So, you’ve got your brand new WordPress blog setup, and maybe you’ve even written a few posts. However, now that you have your feet wet, you want to add some new features to give it some flare. You’re going to want to install a few plugins.

WordPress Plugins are just like they sound, they are add-ons that you “plug in” to interact with your site. Popular plugins include a share/bookmark button, site analytics and tools for Twitter. Below, I’m going to walk you though the steps for installing a Google Sitemap plugin to your blog or website.

To get started, you’ll want to first navigate to the plugin. If you know the exact plugin that you want, you can just search for it in Google. If not, you’ll go to the WordPress Plugin Directory. Once there, you can search for the plugin you want. For our case, we’ll type in “Google Sitemap.” 

Next, you’ll find the plugin you want to install and proceed to downloading it onto your computer.

After you download it to your computer, you now need to get it uploaded to your blog. To do this, you’ll go to the control panel for your website and find “file manager.”

Once in file manager, you’ll go to the plugin subfolder, which should be located in the “wp-content” folder. Once you’ve clicked on this subfolder, you’ll now upload the plugin.

Like all zip files, you’ll now have to unzip the file into the plugin subfolder.

Once it’s extracted, you can now go to the administration panel for your wordpress blog. Once there, you’ll go to the plugin section on the left bar and notice that your plugin has been installed, but needs to be activated.

You can make any necessary changes to the options and settings of the plugin and then click to activate it. Once activated, you can then test to make sure it is in fact working.

From there, you can choose at any time to change your settings or go onto installing your next plugin.