How to Use WordPress Plugins?
How to use, add and manage WordPress plugins?
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:13 Installed Plugins
1:26 Adding New Plugin
3:36 Plugin File Editor
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In the Plugins section there are 3 options.
Installed plugins allow us to view all currently installed plugins. By default, after installing WordPress two plug-ins will be present. They are installed, but not activated, so you can activate or delete them. Also, in the section of installed plugins, you will receive notifications when a new version of the plugin is released. You can do the update, but we suggest that, before you do the update, take a look at the details to see what the new version brings compared to the old one, as well as information whether the new version is compatible with the WordPress version you are using. There is also an option to enable automatic update, but our suggestion is to leave this option turned off. Since the new version of the plugin is compatible with our version of WordPress, we will do an update and leave this plugin in the installed list, since it will be very useful for us in the blog section, to protect our site from spam comments. We will not use the other plugin, and we will delete it.
We move on to the second option, adding a new plugin. As with themes, in the plugin section you can upload a plugin or search using some filters, but the option you will probably use most often is search using keywords. Also, there is a search option using author or tag, but keyword is definitely something that is used the most.
On our website, we will need to create a contact form, so we will type Contact form in the search input field. Based on our request, we received a list of plugins that can be used to create a Contact form. For each plug-in you can see: title, description, creator name, average rating, number of ratings, number of active installations and info about the last update. One very important piece of information tells us if the plug-in is compatible with our current version of WordPress. If there is no compatibility, there is a possibility that the plug-in will not work as expected.
Clicking on more details will open a pop-up with detailed information about the plugin.
WordPress suggested probably the best two plugins in the first two search results. We've had experience with both, but we'll use the second plugin, as it has better ratings and is simpler to manage than Contact form 7.
Clicking install now will start the installation. The plug-in is now installed, but not active, so we will activate it. Our contact form plugin is now in the list of installed. By hovering on the WP Form in the left navigation, we can manage forms and use the features that this plug-in has. Depending on the plug-in, the plug-in management option can be standalone in the main navigation like WP Forms, inside the appearance section or somewhere else, depending on how it is defined in the plug-in itself.
The last option is a plug-in file editor, which requires coding knowledge. We suggest that you do not change anything here unless you have programming knowledge.