Plugins Can Extend WordPress To Do Almost Anything You Can Imagine

Plugins are additional bits of code that interact with the basic WordPress code to give the blog some extra life. For just about any task you can think of - from displaying photos to providing polls - a WordPress plugin probably exists for that.

It seems that much of the time plugins work in conjunction with widgets. Widgets in WordPress can be defined as little add-ons that put information into your blog's sidebar. They provide a way to organize information, such as the archives, categories, and pages. They provide sections to include images and text, and even spaces for plugins, such as polls, photo galleries, and RSS feed counts.

Take, for example, the widgets on this site's sidebar. There are widgets for the Latest WordPress News, WordPress Web Hosting, and Other CMS Related Sites. Now, if we wanted to display a poll to see how our site is doing to this section, the plugin for it may actually contain a widget. After installation and setup of the plugin, we would log into the dashboard and simply add the polls widget to the sidebar as well with a new section titled Site Poll.

However, plugins do not always coincide with widgets. If you want to display a photo gallery on a page of your blog, for example, this requires installing the plugin and then inserting code on specified blog pages or even template files. Luckily, plugin creators provide detailed instructions, and sometimes entire websites, dedicated to their use.

Don't fret. The WordPress Web Hosting Tutorials section contains information on everything from plugin installation to creation.

Having Trouble

Stop banging your head on your desk trying to piece together random strings of code to get your photos to display in a neat format of x rows by x columns.

The help you need to solve your problems can probably be found in a WordPress plugin. If you can't find the plugin you need on the WordPress Web Hosting site, do the following:

  • 1) Pick yourself up
  • 2) Choose an Internet browser of choice and pull up Google
  • 3) Type in a search for the plugin you need. In this case, we would go with wordpress photo plugin
  • 4) Bask in the glory of the search results. Investigate a plugin until you find one you enjoy, and then follow Step 3 of The Four Easy Steps for installation and activation. It is really that easy