Guide To Blogging

Uploading Wordpress Plugins And Themes

Once you have your wordpress blog installed you might decide it’s time to start changing the look of your blog or adding some useful features. With the wide variety of themes and plugins etc available for your blog it’s something you may find yourself doing on a regular basis so it’s good to make sure you understand the basic must do’s and probably wants before you get started.

The first thing you’ll probably want is an ftp program of some sort (while you can upload things to your blog directory via your web hosts control panel/file manager - due to the size or the amount of files you sometimes need to transfer this can be a very slow process)

I personally use CoffeeCup for my ftp but there’s hundreds of free or paid ftp programs available - each with their own pros and cons. If it’s your first time using a program of this sort it’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with it as they can all look a little different - but the basics are that once you open your ftp program on one side of the screen you’ll have your files that you have saved on your computer on the other side of the screen will be the directory you want to upload/transfer to. Then it’s just a matter of finding what you want to upload, opening the correct path to the file you want to transfer to and dragging your file(s) across.

When it comes to uploading wordpress plugins or themes etc it all works pretty much the same you but you must make sure you are transferring your plugin/theme to the correct path:

When you open your blog directory you’ll see some folders and files - wp-admin, wp-content etc. To upload a theme for example you’ll need to open your blog directory (via ftp) then wp-content and then the themes folder (when you first open this folder you’ll probably see two folders - default and classic) - then it’s simply a matter of transferring the new folder (and all the files within) containing your new wordpress theme from your desktop (or wherever you saved it on your computer) over to the themes folder in your blog directory.

Plugins work much the same except that you go to your wp-content/plugins path in your ftp program.

Remember too that when you find your chosen theme or plugin etc and download it there’s a good chance it will be a zipped file so you should get winzip etc (www.winzip.com) after you have extracted the zipped file there is often a read me file that will contain any further information or upload instructions, it always pays to make sure you read this as there might be some slight changes from one plugin to the next.

Once you have uploaded your new plugin or them - open your blog dashboard and either go to presentation to change your theme or plugins to activate your new plugin (again with the plugins check for any further information - some might require an extra step once it is activated)