WordPress Has Some of the BEST Selection of Plugins On Earth
Introduction
There are thousands of WordPress plugins you can install on your website. Accessing your plugins is as simple as clicking “Plugins” on the sidebar. Once you open your plugins section of WordPress you will have the option to add a new plugin or modify existing ones. WordPress comes with certain plugins added by default. It’s possible to activate, disable, and remove them completely. (Figure 1-1)
But what we want to do is add a new plugin.
Figure 1-1
Adding New WordPress Plugins
Check the top of the page in the screenshot. Your WordPress installation should be similar to this image. This page hasn’t changed much over the years with different WordPress versions and updates. Click the “Add New” next to Plugins at the top of the page to open the Add Plugins screen. This screen allows you to select a new plugin to install from the list of available options. The list can change based on version number and region. So, certain regions and versions of WordPress may not have the same options available. But, most of them should be there.
Search “Yoast SEO” in the search box to have WordPress query the database for the term, or keyword, “Yoast SEO”. If a possible match is found in the database WordPress returns a result based on your query. Think of it much like a Google Search on google.com except within WordPress and its own propriety systems.
Figure 1-2
Installing WordPress Plugins
Find the “Yoast SEO” in your Add Plugins page in WordPress and click “Install Now” to add that plugin into your WordPress installation. (Figure 1-2)
This extends the features of your WordPress website to include all features provided by that plugin.
If you already have the plugin installed you will not see “Install Now”. Instead, you may see a blue button that says “Activate”. This means your plugin is installed into your WordPress website but is disabled. Click “Activate” to turn on the plugin and have it start working for you.
If the option is grayed out and says “Active” that plugin is already installed, activated, and working so there is nothing further you need to do on this page for that plugin.
Figure 2-1
Modifying WordPress Plugins
Most WordPress plugins have options that can be set. These options allow you to customize how these extra tools function and work on your website. Customizing the experience allows you to tune the performance of the application to match your specific needs instead of being forced to do things a certain way.
To modify plugin settings click “Plugins” on the sidebar to open the Plugins screen. This screen lists all your currently installed plugins, whether they are activated, deactivated, their version and generally contains more useful options depending on the plugin installed.
To access plugin settings, first find the plugin in the list that you want to change. If the plugin has settings that can be changed you will see it says “settings” underneath the plugin name. (Figure 2-1)
Clicking settings will open up the settings options of that specific plugin. (See Figure 2-2 for the settings page for Yoast SEO).
Figure 2-2
Certain WordPress plugins don’t have a “settings” option on the Plugins page but have it in their own app screen.
FOR EXAMPLE
Jetpack CRM is listed as one of the plugins I have installed in my WordPress website. Notice there is no plugin listed. However, despite there is not a “settings” link on the Plugins page there are many settings available to change.
To find the settings I have to click “Jetpack CRM” on the sidebar to open the plugin page. If you were to search the sidebar with the “Jetpack CRM” plugin page open you will notice more options are available underneath “Jetpack CRM” on the left sidebar than before. (Figure 2-3)
