Finding plugins is so easy. You can just click ‘Add plugins’  under ‘Plugins’ in the sidebar and there are easy instructions from there. Be sure to read the installation notes for the plugins as some do not work straight out of the box. You can also search Google as I sometimes do. The control panel plugin search feature has improved recently but I still find Googling helps me find what I am looking for. Some plugins are not in the wordpress.org repository so you will have to google to find them.

Some people think they can add whatever plugin they like and as many as they like and that might be OK but I am here to tell you that it might not be OK. Keep reading to find out more.

Things to remember:

1. Plugins can slow your site down.
2. Plugins can be a resource hog.
3. Plugins can stop working.
4. Some plugins are not compatible with other plugins.
5. Some plugins are not compatible with some themes.
6. You don’t need every plugin.
7. There are usually several plugins with similar features.

1. Plugins can slow your site down.
As I might have mentioned before, WordPress would be pretty boring without plugins so go ahead and grab some but keep in mind that in general the more plugins you have installed the slower your site will become. Some plugins will cause more damage to your websites speed than others.

2. Plugins can be a resource hog.
This can be an issue on your server side and is similar to the first point. Some plugins make calls to the server and the more calls you make to the server the more CPU power you will need there. If you are on shared hosting which I guess most of the people reading this blog are, myself included, this could mean that your plugins will cause everybody’s web site on that shared server to slow down and web hosts don’t like that and might take your site down. This is not so common though and  I wouldn’t worry about it too much but remember the more plugins you have the more likely it is to cause a problem.

3. Plugins can stop working.
Just because your plugin is working fine today doesn’t mean it will tomorrow. There are several possible reasons. Sometimes upgrading a plugin can cause the problem. For example, recently I upgraded a plugin for a friend and it stopped working and after some investigation I found that the new version wasn’t compatible with PHP4 which is what her web site was run on. Luckily I was able to upgrade it to PHP5 without causing any trouble with the other websites in her hosting plan. There are enough reasons for your plugin to top working to warrant a post dedicated to this issue so stay tuned.

4. Some plugins are not compatible with other plugins.
Simple fact. Sometimes plugins don’t work because of compatibility issues and just won’t work. If nobody else is having problems with the plugin this is likely to be the issue but see next point for another possible cause. Anyway, before you go complaining to the hardworking plugin author you should check the plugin page at wordpress.org or information on the authors own site for compatibility issues. If that fails try google. If you still can’t find the information try disabling all the other plugins and checking to see if the problem plugin is working. If it is working, that means it is a compatibility issue.  Reactivate the plugins one by one to discover which plugin is causing the problem. When you find the problem plugin you have some options:

• You can choose which plugin you want to keep.
• You can contact the plugin author and see if he can fix it.
• You can find alternative plugins

5. Some plugins are not compatible with some themes.
The more complex a theme is the more likely it is to have compatibility issues with a plugin. It is not as common as plugin vs. plugin incompatibility but it does happen and you follow pretty much the same steps as outlined above to solve this issue.

6. You don’t need every plugin.
As you should realize by now just installing a ton of plugins can cause problems. I suggest you carefully select your plugins and choose only what you think will make your site better. For example, in nearly all of my web sites I use an SEO plugin, a Google sitemap plugin and Akismet but I have one private web site that only friends and family can view or comment on posts so I don’t use any of those plugins on that site. The lesson: choose appropriate plugins.

7. There are usually several plugins with similar features.
This is not always the case but in general you can find more than one plugin with the same basic features. How do you choose which one to use? Of course you can compare the features and decide which features you prefer. You could also select a plugin on its ease of installation and use. Compatibility issues (see above) could help make the choice for you. Another thing to look out for is how active is the plugin author. Some plugins are abandoned by the author and even if it is working now I think it is fair to assume that without continued development it is sure to break at some point due to changes in the WordPress software.

Wordpress 2.8 was just released and there are some great new features such as being able to add and delete themes from the control panel and lots more but rather than have me go through it I thought it would be better to just share this great video about the new features.

Wordpress.com Stats
The first one I’d like to mention is Wordpress.com stats. Again, like Akismet, you need to have a Wordpress.com API key (see previous post). This is a nifty plugin that provides a variety of stats and graphs about your website such as how many times posts and pages have been viewed and where your visitors are coming from and you can look at it directly from your control panel. In fact if you have several sites, as I do, using this plugin you can check all their statistics from one of those sites control panels. Also because all of the processing and collection runs on wordpress.com servers and not yours, it doesn’t cause any additional load on your hosting account. That last sentence is pretty much copy and paste.

Official StatCounter Plugin
I use this on all my websites as well as my Cafepress shops. It is one of my favorite tools. You can get some of the same stats from the wordpress.com stats but the thing I love about this tool is that you can see what pages your visitors looked at, you can basically follow their path around your website and you can usually tell where each visitor came from and a host of other stats but the function that I just mentioned is what I look at the most. It can tell you a lot about the visitor but also about your site. If all your visitors are coming to one page and then disappearing from your website, you may have a problem. There are many reasons for this, it could be that you have only one page, an ugly website, a crap article, nothing that entices people to look at other parts of your website or a host of other things. It doesn’t tell you what the problem is unfortunately but it does tell you that there might be  a problem.
To use statcounter you need to have a statcounter account but they have great free service.

Well, I am off to install those two plugins so I will finally know if anyone is visiting this site.

Note: In the next post I will talk about installing plugins and give you some advice about how to find plugins, how to choose the correct ones for you and what to watch out for.

This will be a short post and it is just a recommendation. When you install WordPress using a one click installer your web host often adds a some plugins and themes. I recommend deleting all of these plugins except Akismet (*read important information about Akismet below).

You need to be a wordpress.com member to get a key

Akismet is a great tool for preventing spam comments and trust me you will need get spam. There are other tools but this one works fine. Regarding the other plugins I recommend only installing what you need. Plugins are great and without them WordPress would be boring but to keep your website performing well you ought to keep their use to a minimum. I don’t always practice what I preach but as I write this post the only plugin I am using is Akismet. In the future I will discuss the plugins that I am using on my other WordPress sites.

How do I delete the plugins. Follow these steps.

1. Click ‘Plugins’ on the sidebar of your WordPress control panel.
2. In the ‘Currently Active Plugins’ area select everything except Akismet and from the dropdown menu choose ‘Deactivate’ and click ‘Apply’.
3. In the ‘Inactive plugins’  select all and from the dropdown select ‘delete’.

How and why should I delete themes?
If you want you can preview the themes that your host has pre-installed for you by going to the ‘Appearance’ area in your control panel sidebar and selecting ‘themes’. When you are checking them out make a note of ones that you would never use and later delete them. I recommend keeping the WordPress default theme just for emergencies. Later when you are playing around with themes trying to get the perfect look for your WordPress website or perhaps creating your own themes it will just be a hassle looking through the pages and pages of other themes that web hosts often provide. Delete them now and you will save yourself a lot of time.

Deleting and installing themes is currently not as easy as deleting plugins but I think in the future it will be. Let’s deal with the present though. To add or delete themes you need FTP access. FTP is just a system for uploading and downloading files to your server. Web hosts often provide several ways to do this and they will have details on their site.

*I spoke to soon. As of Wordpress 2.8 you can also install and delete themes from your WordPress control panel.

Activate Permalinks

If you want people to find your website you will need to do SEO and that is not something that I am going to get into in this post but the Permalinks setting contributes to your SEO. Compare these two urls:

http://www.cafetemplates.com/?p=21

http://www.cafetemplates.com/2009/06/10/tips-for-installing-wordpress/

The second is with Permalinks activated and will help search engines to find your WordPress posts. Whether you activate it or not is up to you but I recommend it. To activate it follow these steps:

1. Under ‘Settings’ in the WordPress control panel select ‘permalinks’.
2. There are several settings to choose from but you should select one that includes ‘name’.
3. Press ‘Save Changes’ and that’s it.

*To get Akismet to work you will need a WordPress API key and to get one of those you need to join wordpress.com and they should mail you a key or you can find it in your control panel. This API key can be used for other plugins as well which I will mention later but if you don’t wish to join wordpress.com (it’s free) there are other options to stop spam. I might make a post about them at a later date.

The first thing to understand about WordPress is that it is database driven. Stop. Don’t run away. It’s just a word and you don’t have concern yourself with how it works but I think it is a good idea to understand what it is and what it does. Simply put, a Wordpress website is made up of two parts, the database and the physical files you upload such as pictures and code. The actual data that you type like these words that you are reading right now is stored in the database along with other things that make Wordpress and Wordpress plugins function as a dynamic web site.

If you are using a one click installer you usually don’t have to worry about creating a database but if you are going to install WordPress yourself you will need to create the database. Creating a database is very simple with most web hosts though so that shouldn’t be a problem. If you are having trouble doing this please contact your web host and they will surely help you. If they don’t you should change hosts.

One more point about one click installers. In Dreamhost there is an easy option for installing WordPress but you will be limiting what you can do with your WordPress web site if you do this and also you won’t be able to follow everything in this blog if you choose that option so please keep that in mind.

In easy mode you cannot install your own plugins or themes (though there are a number included). To have full customizability, pick advanced mode below.

Don’t worry though, Advanced mode is not difficult at all. And I think that you can figure it out within a few minutes even if it is your first time to see it. Again, if you are having problems your web host will help you. If installing by yourself make sure to make a note of:

1. database name
2. hostname
3. user
4. password.

Don’t make the password too easy as someone might try hack into your account one day.

In the next post I will tell you what you should do once you have installed WordPress on your domain using a one click installer.

In general though, almost all web hosts allow you to host WordPress sites but be sure to read the details or contact customer support before you sign up to verify that there will be no problems.

Just an extra note about choosing a web host. After having various bad experiences I did a lot of reasearch before choosing my third host. I read literally hundreds of reviews that I found but rather than finding a perfect web host I found that these reviews are unreliable. While some of them may be genuine so many are probably faked by staff of these web hosting companies posting negative reviews about competitors, positive reviews about their own services and claims that the other companies are using these dity tactics. It is so bad out there that you don’t know who to believe so I say, if you are on the fence about which hosting company to choose ask you friends which they use and if they are happy with them or perhaps contact a small website or blog owner and ask them. Don’t waste your time wadingthrough all the reviews and review sites out there. It might just put you off starting your web site.

When you have chosen a web host come back here and in the next post I will show you how easy it is to set up a Wordpress site.

This first theme that I am using is Hybrid by Justin Tadlock so  I expect it to change very soon as Justin has plans for the imminent release of Wordpress 2.8.

I am a big fan of WordPress and am using it on several sites. I will discuss those sites and the themes that I have chosen to use or not use at a later date. I will also be talking about plugins and many other random Wordpress musings. Hopefully as time goes by I will be able to provide some useful tutorials for people who want to use Wordpress.

What do I know? I know some html and css and I think what I don’t know I can learn quickly enough. I have designed a few small web sites. I have studied the basics of php and hope to study it more and more.I am also interested in javascript. I even have a javascript book which sits on my shelf unopened, taunting me after about a year or so.

What do you need to know? Nothing. I will try my best to present everything as simply as possible so that even if you don’t know one word of code you should be able to follow me.