Adding your First Plugin to WordPress
Some may wonder why I am going to explain How to Add a Plugin to WordPress this early in the basic process. The reason, we NEED it before we start adding our WordPress Pages and Categories! The plugin we are going to install today is called the WordPress SEO Plugin, from the uberdose website.
Plugin Details and Reasons to Install
Name: All in One SEO for WordPress
Need: We need this plugin to help us rearrange some of the default settings within WordPress. In addition, it offers us a very simple way to block certain areas of our website from search indexing, which will help eliminate duplicate content onsite.
For those who rather watch the video, Click Here :: Video Length: 9:20
Downloading the Plugin
After you visit the uberdose siteand read & learn about the SEO plugin, you want to click on the link to download it to your local system. I keep a folder on my storage hard drive named: “WordPress”, inside of that folder, I have a second folder named: “WordPress Plugins”. Whenever I download a plugin for WP, it goes into that folder. Makes finding them MUCH easier 2 months from now! :-)
Extract the Archive and Upload to your WordPress File System
Unfortunately, it looks like HostGator has removed the ability to extract zip files directly on your server. In the past, you could upload the zip, extract it right on your account and just move the folder to the right place. Now, you need to extract the archive locally and upload via ftp.
So…
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Extract the zip file onto your own hard drive
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Upload the entire all-in-one-seo-pack folder into your /wp-content/plugins/ directory on your website.
Once you have the all-in-one-seo-pack folder on your server, you should see it as: public_html/wp-content/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/. In this case, the reference to public_html refers to the root folder of your hosting account, and assumes you have WordPress setup to run from the root. As you can see by my file structure below, I have the DIYReviews site as an add-on domain on this account, so my website root folder is: public_html/diyreviews/
Activating the WordPress Plugin
Now that you have uploaded your new plugin, you have to go into your WordPress Plugin manager and turn it on, so it can be used to help us restructure some of the page elements within WordPress!
1 – Login to your WordPress admin
2 – Go to the Plugins Manager
3 – Activate the Plugin
For those who rather watch the video, Click Here :: Video Length: 9:20
Setting the Options in the All in One SEO Plugin
In order to understand the options for this plugin, first go back to the uberdose plugin page and read how each section works. If you watch the video for this post, I do walk through each setting very briefly, explaining what to do in those specific sections. Fortunately, the default settings for this plugin are very much set the way you want to use them on your site!
After you wirte a meta-title, description, and sitewide keywords, your plugin is ready to use in other areas of your WordPress website.
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Adding the First Pages to your WordPress Website
- WordPress Admin won’t Load? Check the aLinks Plugin
- Build a Niche Store WordPress Plugin Review – WPBans
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
WordPress is a great blogging platform and getting it search engine optimized really isn’t a hard task. Using proper permalinks and robots.txt file to prevent duplicate content and a few other methods can really make a difference. The All in One SEO plugin is really the best bet.
Thank you for the comment and I truly enjoyed the list of plugins in your list!
All in one SEO is the absolute 1st plug in must for anyone serious about their blogging business. I love being able to input my meta description and keywords right in the “write” panel.
If anyone is looking for a great FTP client for uploading and managing their website files, Filezilla is free, and easy to set up!
Great post Mark!
Second Filezilla. I’ve been using it for at least two years with no problems.
All In One SEO is the first plugin I install and activate as well. I agree that it is definitely a must have.
@WP SEO Plugins – That is a great list of plugins on your site. A few were new to me.
@Elijah – Do you happen to use FireFox? If you do, have you checked out the FireFTP addon? Quick, secure uploads right from your browser. Just thought I would mention it in case you hadn’t heard of it.
mark-
first, very much enjoying your series of post. A few questions, may sound off the wall.
Is there any value in submitting the content from your posts as ‘articles’ to article directories, the way we did for SEO with articles for ‘BANS’ sites? I know WP is publishing this content for google, but I used to get lots of traffic from ezines to my sites.
Second, I got my WP/BANS site indexed very quickly in google, almost immediately. But in the last 2 weeks I’ve added tons of pages and posts, but google hasn’t indexed any of those new pages. Isn’t there something in your robot.txt or some other setting you can use to get google to index more frequently?
thanks and keep it up.
@ All – Filezilla is a great tool for sure! If you are interested in an upload utility for WP, there is actually, you guessed it… a standalone upload plugin! LOL
I would suggest everyone get themselves an ftp program anyhow – life is so much easier when you work on files locally, then ftp them to the hosting account.
@ Glenn –
You would NOT want to submit a post or ANY content from your own site to an article directory. If so, it is nothing but duplicated content and will depricate the value of the links you may get from those who get and post it from the article directory.
In regard to indexing, I will talk about rpc ping servers within the next few days, when I start showing how to work with the content editor.
Essentially, in WP, you have a writing option that allows you to list one or hundreds of blog search engines. Every time you post, they are pinged with your new content.
Settings > Writing > Update services (It is at the very bottom of the page)
I use feedburner as a single pingshot, and feedburner distributes it to all of the others for me. Saves local resources and as we know, feedburner is owned by Google! :-)
Mark
Great post, Mark!
Do you recommend filling in the home title, home description and home keywords in the settings area or is that pretty well handled in the general settings area where you put in most of this information?
I’ve been using this plugin for a long time. Thanks for taking the time to show me how to configure it. I believe somebody just told me it worked fine out of the box so I haven’t paid much attention to it.
DOH!
Jeff
@ Jeff -
For the most part, it does work great at correcting, or “optimizing” the way WP handles the page/post meta code.
I use the main settings for my own sites… otherwise, they are left blank and ONLY the title tag is completed!
When you configure the main settings, it primarily effects the homepage only, with the meta-title, keys, and description. Everything else comes at the post level for the plugin.
Mark
No Mark,
HostGator has not removed the ability to extract zip files directly on your server. Only yesterday I uploaded the zip of WP Super Cache and Google XML Sitemaps plugins, and unzipped them in cpanel only.
Please rectify.
Mark,
Just to clarify-you DO fill in the home page title,description and keywords in the All In One SEO settings area or you only use the WP general settings for the home page?
For the posts, you DO fill in all of the All In One SEO fields near the bottom of the posts?
I’m not sure where the question came from but I noticed I had to tar.gz a bunch of plugin files the other day to get HG to extract them. It wouldn’t work for me either on a simple zip file.
Jeff
@ GB –
It must be server specific… I checked all of my own hosting accounts with HG as I was writing this yesterday, and of the shared accounts and the reseller account, none had the ability to handle zip files any longer.
I checked the HG support forums, just to be sure I was not missing something and with the upgrade to php5.2, they have disabled the extraction, due to exploits. It may be that the box you are on is still in the update process.
@ Jeff -
I complete the regular WP settings for the title/description during fantastico setup, but after installing the plugin, I also do the SEO setting inthe plugin for the site. It just takes the place of the standard setting…
I will discuss the post level settings today.
Mark
I apologize for getting off-topic, but does anyone have a suggestion for a good tool to check the back links to my website?
For some reason, when I check on yahoo for inbound links, I show over 200 of them however, I get a big, fat zero on Google.
Does this mean that my website is still not indexed by Google?
I’ve tried everything I can find to fix the problem, with no success.
I’m sooooo confused!
@ John -
The best thing is Google Websmaster Tools…
All in all though, it looks like your site is not in the G index. The toolbar PR tool shows that it IS indexed, but the cache results and site: trigger come back with no results.
Do you use Google Websmaster Tools? If not, go there and setup a free account and add your site. Once your site is verified, you have many tools directly from G to check your site info.
Mark
Excellent post as usual Mark.
All-In-One-SEO is one of my favorite WordPress plugins.
The only thing I would add is that not all plugins work correctly and for that reason it might be wise to keep a second window open with your admin area opened just incase you get any error messages that won’t let you back in. I have had this happen to me about 4 or 5 times.
If that fails you can always go through your FTP client and delete the plugin that you just added.
It’s a scary thing to see a screen of errors and not be able to get back into your blog. But it’s not so scary when you know how to handle it.
Keep the great info coming Mark.
Mark,
Perfect timing on this post. I have a couple of BANs sites and follow your blog as time allows. From the beginning, I always wanted sites that folks would come back to, but organizing the content was a pain. I started a WP blog a while back and have been learning as I go. I love it! So now I’m following along with you to pick up tips on what I missed. This weekend I’ve been trying to figure out how to change the meta data, took a break to come over here and read, and there was the answer – All in One SEO. Thanks!
Hey Mark
I realize this is way after this series, but I’ve been out of the loop and am really excited to find this thread – I just got a chihuahua puppy and bought the domain name for her name to build a blog around it. I’ve used WordPress as an add-on for my main site advertising myself as an actress, but not using it as a starting point – this is very cool!
Thanks (again) for all your hard work.
Marilla
@ Marilla –
Great to see you posting again!!
WP is fantastic – once you get deep into usig it, you wont look back!! I have been converting many of my local web design customs from static html sites to WP driven sites, using it as a CMS versus a blogging platform.
Actress? Please do shoot us a link to learn more about!!
Mark
Here you go, Mark – here’s the link to the website about my acting and stand-up – http://www.marillawex.com – how original!
Just found your site – Brilliant.
I wanted to comment on what you said about Feedburner, Its an absolute “no-brainer” for me. Everyone should have a feedburner account and “burn” their targeted niche blogs, the payback is terrific!
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