WordPress Plugins come in two styles: drop-in and mess with. Those are my terms, not the official ones.

Drop in WordPress Plugins are Plugins you upload, activate, and then interact with only through the WordPress Administration Panels.

Mess With WordPress Plugins are the ones you install and interact with through the Administration Panels, but they also involve editing your WordPress Theme template files, which means you are messing around with your WordPress blog.

There are some WordPress Plugins which will work from only the WordPress Administration Panels and/or through editing your WordPress Theme. Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin is one of those, allowing you to control it’s functions through the Admin Panels, but also letting you precisely control where, what, and how you want your tags displayed on your blog.

As WordPress and WordPress Plugin authors become more sophisticated about how they write and develop Plugins, less and less editing of the WordPress Theme is done. Some WordPress Widgets allow positioning of their content around on the user’s WordPress Theme from within the Admin Panels, if the Theme is enabled to handle WordPress Widgets.

Widgets and similar non-editing of WordPress Themes will become the “better” way of doing things, but some of the best and most popular WordPress Plugins still involve editing the Theme. Especially if the user wants total control over the content and layout of their web design.

Let’s look at the basics of how to install and use a WordPress Plugin, whether is it drop-in-and-forget or a mess-with-your-theme type in this month dedicated to WordPress Plugins.

Installing a WordPress Plugin

All WordPress Plugins install the same way.

1. Download the latest version of the WordPress Plugin to your computer.
2. With an FTP program, access your site’s server.
3. Upload (copy) the Plugin file(s) or folder to the /wp-content/plugins folder.
4. In your WordPress Administration Panels, click on Plugins from the menu at the top.
5. You should see your new Plugin listed. If not, with your FTP program, check the folder to see if it is installed. If it isn’t, upload the file(s) again. If it is, delete the files and upload them again.
6. To turn the WordPress Plugin on, click Activate on the far right side of the list.
7. Check your Administration Panels or WordPress blog to see if the Plugin is working.

From here, the process may vary.

Configuring Your WordPress Plugin

If your WordPress Plugin requires some form of configuration or set up, it will add a tab to your Administration Panels.

The official placement policy is to put WordPress Plugin tabs under Options. Not everyone obeys this. Many place their Plugin tab where it will be the most “user friendly” such as the Akismet Plugin under Comments since it deals with comments and you may be checking caught comment spam on a regular basis. Others put it anywhere they feel is appropriate. Check the Plugin’s official page or documentation for instructions on where they’ve put their configuration panel.

Following the Plugin author’s instructions, configuring your WordPress Plugin could mean setting a few options about where the Plugin’s content is to be visible on your WordPress blog or choosing which options and functions you would like enabled. Some Plugins require adding or changing the default information.

There are a few WordPress Plugins which require you to add files elsewhere in your WordPress setup. Others may require you to change file permissions, known as CHMODE, on a file or folder. The instructions in Changing File Permissions will guide you through how to make those changes.

Most WordPress Plugin authors supply fairly clear instructions on the step-by-step process to configure the Plugin. Read through these carefully. I’ve included troubleshooting tips at the bottom of this article.

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NOTE: To see changes a Plugin makes on your blog, you will need to clear the cache (memory) of your web browser. This is called refresh. In Internet Explorer, hold down the Shift key and click F5. In Firefox, hold down Ctrl+Shift+R. This will reload the web page and clear the “memory” so you see a “clean” version of your page.

This doesn’t work all the time. Click another post link on your blog that you haven’t looked at recently if you run into problems refreshing your browser. For more information see I Make Changes and Nothing Happens.

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Adding a WordPress Plugin to Your WordPress Theme

The WordPress Plugins which require messing around with your WordPress Theme aren’t hard to use. They just take some time, patience, and a little lesson in how WordPress and WordPress Themes works.

WordPress Themes are made up of template files. A WordPress Theme uses template files like modular building blocks, using only the ones it needs to combine together to build a single web page on your blog. Template files include the header, sidebar, footer, and content areas. Each WordPress template file contains code which collects information from the database and displays it on a generated web page.

Peek inside the index.php or single.php template file at the title section of the WordPress post and you might see:

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<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<small><?php the_time(’F jS, Y’) ?> by <?php the_author() ?></small>

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Inside of the h2 tag is a placeholder database request called a template tag that requests the permalink (address) of the post in a link, and then the title of the post (the_title). In the small tag, there is a request for the date of the post and the name of the author.

While the code looks overwhelming to us, the result your visitor sees is:

Title of the Article
January 12, 2007 by Alex Author Anderson

The information was collected from the database by the template tags. The template tags above are part of the core programming of WordPress. A Plugin template tag acts upon instructions from the Plugin you add to your blog, but it works the same way as regular WordPress template tags.

Some Plugin template tags are very simple, requiring only the tag set into the template file wherever you want the content to appear.

For example, if you would like to use the Random Quotes WordPress Plugin, which displays random quotes that you supply to your WordPress blog, in the spot where you want the quotes to appear, you would place the following in the desired spot in a template file:

<?php wp_quotes_random(); ?>

Some WordPress Plugins require more customization, adding parameters to the Plugin to get the results you want. The Customizable Post Listings WordPress Plugin allows you to display the most recent 10 posts on your blog:

<?php c2c_get_recent_posts(10); ?>

Want only five posts in the list, then change the 10 to 5.

The Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin is also customizable, offering you many different methods of displaying and showcasing tags on your blog. To create a colored and variable font sized tag cloud, showing the most popular 50 tags, the UTW template tag would be:

<?php
UTW_ShowWeightedTagSetAlphabetical("coloredsizedtagcloud","","50");
?>

In the first example with the Customizable Post Listing WordPress Plugin, there was only one option to change in the parentheses. In the Ultimate Tag Warrior example, there are three parameters to change, each wrapped in quote marks.

A template tag consists of a function name and then the parameters inside of parentheses. The parameters provide instructions to the function on how it should behave.

The format for the UTW template tag is:

UTW_FunctionTitle ("formattype", "format", "limit"  

The UTW_Function_Title tells the Plugin which function you want to use. The function UTW_ShowWeightedTagSetAlphabetical means you want to show a weighted set of tags in alphabetical order. UTW_ShowTagsForCurrentPost uses the Plugin function to create a list of tags for only the current post, not all the tags on your blog. UTW_ShowRelatedTagsForCurrentPost sets the function to show only the related tags for the current post, not just the tags associated with the post.

The first of the three parameters used by UTW is formattype. In this parameter you would use a string or words that instructs the plugin on the format type you wish to use. For example:

<?php UTW_ShowWeightedTagSet("sizedtagcloud","","25"  ?>

The formattype tells the function for showing a tag cloud with the most popular tags at the beginning of the list, showing only 25 and sized for popularity.

To show the same 25 tags with the tag words colorized, popularity only indicated by color not by size, you would use:

<?php UTW_ShowWeightedTagSet("coloredtagcloud","","25"  ?>

To show another set of the same tags, but showing 45 tags in a list rather than a “cloud”, you would use:

<?php UTW_ShowWeightedTagSet("tagcloudlist","","45"  ?>

Each WordPress Plugin features different ways of controlling how it works, what it displays, and how it displays that information. Read through the Plugin’s instructions carefully to determine how to set it to meet your needs. For more information on how template tags work in WordPress, see Anatomy of a Template Tag and How to Pass Tag Parameters.

Adding the Plugin Template Tag to Your WordPress Theme

Once you determine how you want to customize your WordPress Plugin template tag, you need to add it to your WordPress Theme.

Where do you want to put it? Where you want to put your WordPress Plugin template tag is dependent upon how it works, where it works, and where you want it to go.

There are two main sections that generate a web page in a WordPress blog. The most important section is within the WordPress Loop. This is the section that generates the post content for your blog. Anything that goes into that area may be repeated on every post on your blog. Anything that goes into that area may be repeated on every post on your blog. Anything that goes into that area may be repeated on every post on your blog.

Yes, I was redundant on purpose.

If you put a WordPress Plugin template tag into the WordPress loop, depending upon the conditional statements and functions of the Plugin, it will be seen in every post on your blog. If you include a list of UTW tags for the current post within the WordPress Loop, that list will be featured on every post on your blog. If you add the WASABI Related Posts template tag to the bottom of your post content within the Loop, a list of related posts will appear on every post in your blog.

The other important section on your WordPress blog is outside the WordPress Loop. Anything outside the loop only appears once. Or so it might seem.

If you put a Plugin template tag into your sidebar, it will only be visible when your sidebar is visible. Some WordPress Themes do not feature a sidebar in the single post view, only multi-post views. Thus it will be there only when the sidebar is there.

Some WordPress Plugins require placement within the WordPress Loop. They need the way WordPress accesses information from the database within the Loop to gather their own information to display on your post.

WordPress Plugins that work outside of the WordPress Loop aren’t reliant upon it, so they can go anywhere within your blog, inside or outside of the WordPress Loop.

Adding a WordPress Plugin to the WordPress Loop

For Plugins that require the WordPress Loop, you will need to place them within the Loop.

The WordPress Loop is found on any template file within your WordPress Theme that generates post content. It can be the index.php, single.php, page.php, category.php, archives.php, etc.

The WordPress Loop begins with:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

For our purposes, it ends with:

<?php endwhile; ?>

Your WordPress Plugin template tag needs to go within that area. But where?

The WordPress Loop typically consists of three core areas:

1. Post Title and Author Information: This is the post title, author, date, and other information you want in the post title section of your post.
2. Post Content: This is where your post or Page is generated.
3. Post Meta Data Section: This section is where information about your post may be displayed. It might include the date or time of the post, categories, tags, author information, social bookmarking submission links, related posts, moods, or whatever you would like to complement your post.

Here is a Default Theme’s Loop with the specific sections highlighted:

---

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<– Post Title Section –>
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y' ?> <!– by <?php the_author() ?> –></small>
<– Post Content Section –>
<div class="entry">
<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?>
</div>
<– Post Meta Data Section –>
<p class="postmetadata">Posted in <?php the_category(', ' ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?> <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?></p>
</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>

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If you would like to add the WASABI Related Posts Plugin to the Post Meta Data Section, you might add it like this:

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<– Post Meta Data Section –>
<p class="postmetadata">Posted in <?php the_category(', ' ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?></p>
<h4>Related Posts</h4>
<?php related_posts(); ?>
<p><?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?></p>
</div>

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To add a social bookmarking site submission bar just above your post meta data section with the Sociable WordPress Plugin, you might use:

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<– Post Meta Data Section –>
<?php print sociable_html(); ?>
<p class="postmetadata">Posted in <?php the_category(', ' ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?> <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?></p>
</div>

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Or possibly, you might want the Sociable WordPress Plugin to feature the icon links just below the title of your post:

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<– Post Title Section –>
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y' ?> <!– by <?php the_author() ?> –></small>
<?php print sociable_html(); ?>

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Experiment with the placement until you get your Plugin’s information in the right spot. For examples of the many ways you can add WordPress Template Tags and WordPress Plugins to your post meta data section in the Post Meta Data Section on the WordPress Codex.

A Word of Warning: While moving the Plugin template tag around, take care not to get in the way of the rest of the code by placing it inside of the WordPress code or by erasing any part of the code. Just use extreme caution and make a lot of backups and notes along the way, just in case.

Adding the WordPress Plugin Template Tag Outside the WordPress Loop

For WordPress Plugins that do not have to be within the WordPress Loop, you can put them anywhere.

The most popular places outside of the WordPress Loop for displaying additional information on your blog are the header, sidebar(s) and footer.

The challenge confronting most people is WHERE in your sidebar, header, or footer to put the darn thing. Let’s start with the confusing sidebar.

Begin by viewing your blog in its WordPress Theme. Using the most recent posts option with the Customizable Post Listings WordPress Plugin, look at your sidebar to determine where you might want that list to go? Before or after your list of categories? How about after?

Look carefully at the words used in your category list or wherever you want to put the Plugin. Pick a few unique words.

In your web browser, choose View > Source or View > Page Source from the menu. In the resulting page that opens, search for the unique words in the category section. When you find them, move up to the top of that list and look for something like:

<h2>Categories</h2>

You may find a <div id="sidebar"> or other clearly marked identifier in the HTML code. Whatever it is, remember it.

In a text editor, open the sidebar.php template file in your WordPress Theme’s folder.

Search for the HTML identifier to find the categories list.

For the Default Theme, you will find:

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<li><h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories('sort_column=name&optioncount=1'); ?>
</ul>
</li>

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This is the template tag section that creates a list of your categories. Look closely and you will see that it is in a “nested list”. Anything you add after it should also be in a list form. Our list of recent posts is in a list form, so we need to add another line to the list to accommodate the WordPress Plugin.

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<li><h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories('sort_column=name&optioncount=1'); ?>
</ul>
</li>
<li><h2>Related Articles</h2>
<?php related_posts(); ?>
<li><h2>…

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The Related Posts Plugin automatically creates a list for us, so we don’t have to worry about that part of the nested list.

You might want to add quotes with the Random Quotes WordPress Plugin to your blog’s header. Opening the header.php template file in a text editor, you might place the Plugin template tag just below the description section:

---

<div id="header">
<div id="headerimg">
<h1><a href="<?php echo get_settings('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?>
<div class="randomquotes">
<?php wp_quotes_random(); ?>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

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As with Plugins within the WordPress Loop, take care and caution when placing your Plugin template tags. If you don’t like where they end up, move them to another spot.

Using CSS, you can style the look of Plugin template tag content in your style.css style sheet. If your Plugin doesn’t come with style references, you can add your own by wrapping the Plugin in a style tag as shown above with the random quotes.

Conditionalizing WordPress Plugins

Conditionalizing WordPress Plugins means providing code that makes the Plugin work or display its content depending upon the conditions at the time and the page the user is viewing.

The most common conditional statement for a WordPress Plugin is preventing it from breaking your WordPress Theme when it is turned off. Many WordPress Plugin authors take the appropriate steps when writing the Plugin to protect it from breaking your WordPress Theme when deactivated. Many don’t.

If the WordPress Plugin you are using breaks your Theme, put it in a conditional statement that says “if turned off, ignore this Plugin”.

Using the example of the Random Quotes WordPress Plugin, instead of adding <?php wp_quotes_random(); ?> to your template file, you would wrap it in a conditional statement:

---

<?php
if (function_exists('wp_quotes_random')) {
wp_quotes_random();
} ?>

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However, not all Plugin template tags are as simple as that. Some are set into headings and lists such as:

---

<li id="recent">Related Articles
<ul>
<?php related_posts(); ?>
</ul></li>

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If the Plugin is turned off, the viewer would see the Related Articles heading and nothing underneath it. So the entire section must be put into a conditional tag so it disappears if the Plugin is deactivated.

---

<?php
if (function_exists('related_posts')) {
echo ('<li id="recent">Related Articles<ul>');
related_posts();
echo ('</ul></li>');
}
?>

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Plugins Appear When You Want Them to Appear

There are times when you want a WordPress Plugin to appear only on specific pages or posts. For example, you might want to only have related posts visible on single post views and not multi-post views, keeping the related posts specific to the topic at hand.

You would add a statement using conditional tags that say “If viewing a single post, display the related posts information”. It would look like this in the sidebar:

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<li><h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories('sort_column=name&optioncount=1'); ?>
</ul>
</li>
<?php if (is_single())
{
<li id="recent">Related Articles
<ul>
<?php related_posts(); ?>
</ul></li>
} ?>
<?php get_links_list(); ?>
<li><h2>Meta<h2>…

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Let’s make this a little more complicated and add the same related posts Plugin template tag in a conditional statement to protect the Theme if the Plugin is disabled, and add it to our conditional tag that only shows the related posts when viewing a single post page. A conditional statement within a conditional statement, if you will.

---

<li><h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories('sort_column=name&optioncount=1'); ?>
</ul>
</li>
<?php if (is_single())
{ ?>
<?php if (function_exists('related_posts')) {
echo ('<li id="recent">Related Articles<ul>');
related_posts();
echo ('</ul></li>');
} ?>
<?php } ?>
<?php get_links_list(); ?>
<li><h2>Meta<h2>…

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This is a bit tricky. As always take care with this and pay close attention. One forgotten bit of code and things will break.

You can learn more about how these conditional tags work in WordPress through the Conditional Tags article in the WordPress Codex.

Troubleshooting WordPress Plugins

There are five main reasons why a WordPress Plugin won’t work.

1. Mizzed Spellings: When possible, copy and paste the Plugin code into your WordPress Theme. If you are typing in UTW_ShowWeightedTagSetAlphabetical, it takes one slip of the finger to screw that up.
2. Smart Quotes or Curly Quotes: WordPress blogs turn quote marks into pretty, smart quotes or curly quotes, which will not work in template files. Plain text and plain text quote marks are required. Plugin authors often don’t know how to convert quotes to " or apostrophes into ' in order for them to become the “text” characters on a post that will also work inside of PHP code. Check to make sure you haven’t copied any curly quotes into your WordPress template files. And always use a text editor not word processor.
3. A Missing Bit of Code: It takes just one comma, quote mark, apostrophe, bracket, parentheses, semi-colon, question mark, or other bit of code to go astray and you have borked code. Be careful and check every bit of code to make sure all the pieces are there. Compare it with the original to double check you haven’t backspaced over something important.
4. Wrong Plugin With Wrong WordPress Version: Some Plugin authors provide multiple versions of their Plugin for different versions of WordPress. Others create one Plugin and then never update it to work with different versions. Check thoroughly to make sure the Plugin version you are using will work with your version of WordPress.
5. Conflict With Another Plugin: Not all Plugin authors hang out together and discuss their Plugins. If one person decides to name their Plugin function functionone and another does the same thing, the two Plugins won’t play nice nice on your WordPress blog. The same applies to variables and other functions and instructions within a WordPress Plugin. While they do their best to keep their programming commands unique to their Plugin, conflicts happen.

   To determine if this is what is wrong, deactivate the Plugins one by one and test the results to see if one isn’t playing nicely with the Plugin you are trying to use. If it isn’t, then contact the Plugin author to let them know and work on a fix.

Problems happen. Bugs happen. Once a WordPress Plugin is released to the public, reports start appearing regarding problems and bugs. So check in with the official page of the WordPress Plugin for updates, patches, and fixes you may need to do, if you are having trouble with the Plugin.

How to Ask For Help With a WordPress Plugin

The number one rule for finding WordPress help is to search first. With millions of WordPress users out there, the odds are that you are not the first with the problem. The answer is probably out there. Search first. Then ask.

If you are having trouble with a WordPress Plugin that you cannot resolve, the first place to go is to the Plugin author’s official page.

I highly recommend that you stop before you go further and read through the instructions backwards. Start with the last instruction on the list and go backwards to make sure you did everything you were supposed to do. I’ve found many an overlooked step or missed instruction this way.

Read through the instructions and the comments on the page. Plugin authors should add instructions and tips made by users to their own instructions, but often they just rely upon the fixes and tips left in the comments. You may find the solution you need in the comments, so read through them carefully.

If you cannot find the help on that page, search through the blog to see if there are other posts discussing the Plugin. There, or in that post’s comments, might be the answer.

If you cannot find the answer by searching the author’s blog, before you post a question there, take time to search the WordPress Support Forums to see if someone had the same problem and came up with an answer.

If you still can’t find a solution there, search the web. Type in the error or descriptive keywords into a search engine and go down the results to see if someone found a solution.

If all that searching fails, go back to the Plugin author’s blog and ask them on the most recent post or the official Page for the Plugin.

Here are some tips to help you get a speedy reply.

• Keep the question short and to the point. They don’t need the story, just the facts.
• Do not post a long section of code for them to inspect. Do not post a long page of errors. If necessary, use a pastebin to include a link to the example code or errors from within your comment.
• Posting code in comments will mess things up on the blog and not reproduce correctly. Change all < to < at a minimum. For more information on using code in posts and comments, see Writing Code in WordPress Posts and How NOT to Comment on Comments.
• If the error or problem is still visible on your blog, make sure a link to your blog is in the comment form or in the comment itself.
• Be factual, specific, and gracious.
• Be patient. Plugin authors have a life and it may take a day or three to get an answer.

While waiting for a response, or if searching takes some time, copy the errors into a text file, and deactivate the Plugin so it won’t continue to cause problems or look ugly on your blog.

There are some Plugins which are similar to each other. If this one doesn’t work for you, look around. You might find one that does.

Here are some other resources help you with WordPress and WordPress Plugins:

• Getting More WordPress Help
• Using the Support Forums
• New To WordPress - Where to Start
• First Steps With WordPress
• FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
• Finding Your CSS Styles
• Troubleshooting Nested Lists
• Backing Up Your Database
• The Layout is All Messed Up
• I Make Changes and Nothing Happens
• Understanding the WordPress Loop
• Customizing the WordPress Loop
• A Love Letter to WordPress Plugin Authors
• Conditional Tags
• Editing Files
• WordPress Plugins
• Managing Plugins

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