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Finding and Installing Plugins with Wordpress 2.7 is as easy as it gets. No more FTP software required!
Now you can easily find a plugin and then install and activate it right from within the new Wordpress 2.7 administrator’s dashboard.
You can still use the old method to FTP your new plugin from your PC up to your website’s wp-content/plugins folder if you want, but now you don’t have to! So for the technically challenged among us things just got a whole lot easier.
NOTE: The information in this post relates to Self-Hosted Wordpress only – if you have a free blog at Wordpress.com then you will find that the Plugin option is disabled (ie not there!).
Check Your Plugin Is Compatible!
Please note that not all plugins will be compatible with this new version of Wordpress, so you must check that the one you want to use is ok by contacting the developer or by checking the list at wordpress.org .
If you need a new plugin or just want to see what is compatible then look at this list of plugins that have been checked for use with 2.7:
Wordpress 2.7 Compatible Plugins
Find and Install Plugins Easily With Wordpress 2.7
Just login to the Wordpress 2.7 admin account via your browser with the yourdomain.com/wp-admin URL and you will be presented with the newly designed 2.7 dashboard layout:
Just look down the menu bar on the left until you see Plugins and click just to the right of it to display an expanded small drop-down menu:
You will then see 3 options:
- Installed
- Add New
- Editor
Click on Add New so you can install your new plugin.
The other two options are for displaying a list of the current plugins (Installed) at your website and for actually editing the code (Edit) of a plugin at your site, which is really only for programmers and more technical individuals.
The following Install Plugin page will then be displayed:
On this page you will see different options for finding and installing Wordpress 2.7 plugins:
This is totally different than they way it was done in previous versions of the software, which required you to find your plugins manually and then copy them up to your website using FTP, before activating them.
[1] Find A Plugin Using A Search Facility
[2] Install A Plugin From Your Personal Computer
[3] Find A Plugin By Browsing Tag Descriptions
[1] Find A Plugin With Search and Install It
You can use the Search Facility on the Install Plugins page to look for Plugins according to 3 different criteria, which you select from the drop-down list:
- Term
- Author
- Tag
For this example we are going to search by Term, but searching by Author or Tag will work in exactly the same way.
Click on Term in the drop-down list and enter your Search Term next to it. In this example we are looking for SEO plugins for Wordrpess. Then click on the search button.
A list of plugins matching your search criteria will then be displayed. These are selected from the list of Wordpress plugins hosted for download at wordpress.org. Note that there may be more than 1 page of results.
To find out more about an individual plugin just click on the name of the plugin on the right to display a pop-up window with full details about the plugin
It is important that you do this as the pop-up will also tell you whether or not the plugin is compatible with Wordpress 2.7 and any other requirements you might need to meet before installation.
Notice that an error message will be displayed if the plugin you are looking at has not yet been tested with Wordpress 2.7 – in which case you should proceed with caution as the plugin may not work and in the worse case scenario it could cause your site to fail!
Also make sure you have done a Full Backup of Your Site before installing any new plugins!
Installing Your Plugin from The Search Results
If you find what you are looking for it is really easy to then immediately install that plugin into your website and activate it for use.
To do this just click on the Install link to the right of the plugin you want and the following pop-up screen will be displayed:
Note: This is the same pop-up that is displayed when you click on the plugin name, so you can install your plugin from either.
To install the new plugin just click on the big red button in the pop-up that will say Install Now or Install Upgrade Now, if you already have a previous version of the plugin installed.
The installation process for your plugin will then begin…
Note: If you are asked for your Website Connection Information you will have to supply your site’s FTP hostname url, the FTP username and password.
Wordpress 2.7 then goes and gets the zipped folder of the plugin from wordpress.org and then downloads it to your website, unzips the folder, copies the plugin into your wp-content/plugins folder to install it and tells you that it has done so.
Now you can either Activate the Plugin or Return to the Plugins page to find more plugins.
To activate the plugin for immediate use just click on the displayed ACTIVATE PLUGIN link, next to Actions at the bottom of the Instal Plugins page.
The plugin will then be automatically activated by Wordpress 2.7 and the list of currently active plugins (including your new plugin) will displayed with the message PLUGIN ACTIVATED at the top of the page:
So you are done – you have successfull installed and activated your new plugin with Wordpress 2.7!
[2] Installing A Plugin from Your Computer
Again this second option is really easy and assumes that you have found a plugin that you want to use from a location other than wordpress.org and that you have already downloaded it to your own personal computer or laptop.
Note that you do not need to unzip it before installing, as Wordpress 2.7 will do that for you.
Click on the BROWSE button to start the search on your personal computer for the plugin you want installed.
This will start a Windows browser screen on your local PC and will allow you to go to the location where the unzipped plugin can be found. Remember that the plugin has to still be zipped (compressed) as Wordpress 2.7 expects to find a file in the .ZIP format.
When you find the plugin select it and click OK to close your Windows browser screen. This will then return control to the Install Plugins pahe in Wordpress and the location and filename.zip of plugin you selected will shown in the Browse box.
Now just click on the INSTALL NOW button to have Wordpress 2.7 install the plugin for you…
Once again you will see the plugin installation process as it happens and the plugin will be uploaded to your website, unzipped and copied into the wp-content/plugins folder for installation:
You will then be able to activate it using the ACTIVATE PLUGIN link in Actions at the bottom of the Install Plugins page.
When you do this the plugin will be activated and ready for you to use. Once again this is very easy!
[3] Find A Plugin by Browsing Tags and then Install it
The third and final option for installing a plugin in Wordpress 2.7 allows you to browse plugins by Category or TA. The plugins you are able to browse are those situated for download at wordpress.org.
You simple click on the TAG that you wish to browse in the tag cloud at the bottom of the Install Plugins page.
A page of results will then be displayed similar to that in the Term Search Results as described in option [1] above. Here I click on the admin tag…
To install and then activate the plugin you want just click on the Install link next to the plugin.
To follow the rest of the installation process for your selected plugin just go back up to option [1] and follow the process for installation there – it is exactly the same!
This completes the tutorial for Installing a Plugin with Wordpress 2.7.
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For the process to follow for the installation of plugins for versions of Wordpress before version 2.7 please use the following link:
How To Install Wordpress Plugins and Activate Them
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Thank you for the information! I just installed wp 2.7.1 and I was stunned that the dashboard was so not user friendly.. coming to your site I see that the whole left menu where you can access everything is missing for me. I have tried the admin on safari and firefox and can’t get that on my admin. May I ask if there is a setting or something that I need to change?
Thanks!
Hi Lorilei,
Seems like your problem might be related to one of your plugins that might not be compatible with version 2.7.
Here are a couple of comments from the Wordpress.org Support Forum on the subject:
“Typically this can been resolved by deactivating ALL your plugins, and then reactivating them one-by-one to determine the offending plugin.”
and…
“In 90% of the 100 or so threads I read about this problem it was due to a dropdown or foldout plugin that was usually causing the trouble.”
You can read more comments on that thread here:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/226048
Good luck and I hope this solves your problem.
Dave.
Please help me!
I do not have a plugins option under appearance in my Wordpress 2.7 dashboard. I’ve looked through all my settings to try to find something that I need to activate but I’ve found nothing. I’d really appreciate your help!!
Hi Amy,
From your website URL I assume you are talking about your free blog at Wordpress.com.
At Wordpress.com the Plugin feature is not activated, as I guess they don’t want us adding code (via plugins) that they don’t control, which I suppose is fair enough as the blogs they provide are free.
If you need the extra functionality that plugins offer you will need to self-host your blog at a web hosting company like Hostgator. This will require that you buy a web hosting account, then install Wordpress (real easy!) and get your posts from your Wordpress.com free blog using Export and then use Import to get them in to your self-hosted blog.
Hope this helps explain your missing plugin facility!
Dave.