In its barebone state wordpress is a simple content management system.
The power of wordpress is unleashed through the vast array of free plugins available for download on the worldwide web. You can find a plugin for pretty much any functionality you want to add to your wordpress blog.
Whether you are looking for a plugin to fight SPAM, control sidebar widgets, to display multimedia such as Youtube videos, to help your blog become more SEO friendly, engage in links exchange , start a wordpress driven e-commerce site or wordpress forum and the list goes on, chances are you will find the wordpress plugin that suits your need.
Just do a quick search on Google by typing your “keywords” plugin wordpress (i.e shopping cart plugin wordpress) to see the results. In the results displayed, your the first choice would be any result with http://wordpress.org/extend/ in the URL. That should lead you to the wordpress plugin directory or better yet the download page of that plugin at the wordpreess official website.
Plugins downloaded from the wordpress plugins directory are tested and compatible with the current wordpress version unless clearly stated in the download page. The wordpress plugin directory (http://wordpress.org/extend/) is also the best place do search for the right plugin.
You can also download and install a plugin right from your wordpress blog admin panel. Just go to the “Plugins” panel located at the left-hand column o your admin area and click on the “Add New” link. That open new page where you can perform the search for the plugin by just entering the keyword(s) pertaining to the functionality you are looking form.
Your search will generally yield several results. Read the description of each result to determine which plugin best match your serach. You can then just click on the “download” link located on the right-hand of the description. Once the plugin is downloaded, you can just activate it and presto.
Some plugins may require some additional settings. In that case you will see a link to that plugin settings page on the “Settings” panel on the left-hand column of your admin area.
The plugin settings window generally contains a detailed information about how you can go about defining the various settings for your plugin to work as you expected.
