How To Upload Plugins WordPress Guide
Some of the most common tasks for those of us who do it every day can be quite frustrating for others trying it for the first time. Uploading WordPress plugins can be one of those things that newbies find frustrating. I have had people ask here on the site and I see it in forums quite often. Someone will upload a plugin but it doesn’t show up in the dashboard. This WordPress Guide will walk you through the process of uploading a WordPress plugin and how to know when to upload the whole folder or a single file.
You should first read any installation instructions on the plugins site if available. Next download the plugin into a folder on your computer that you can find easily. I have a WordPress folder in my documents and in that I have other folders for themes and plugins. I like to keep the things that I can control organized. Then unzip and extract the plugin into the same folder.
This is the part that can confound the newbies so pay attention! Knowing what to upload depends on what you find within the extracted folder. Usually there is a folder within a folder and within that folder is either a single file ending in .php (there may also be a readme text file that does not need uploaded) or several files and maybe even several files and other folders. It all depends on the function on the plugin and how it was coded. Usually uploading the extracted folder will not work and you must keep opening the folders until you see if there is only one file or a group of files. The examples below show what I mean.
This first example shows that there is a folder within the extracted folder and within the second folder is the actual file to upload into the plugins directory.
The next example shows a WordPress plugin with multiple files. Upload the entire folder one level up from the multiple files.
Now you know what to upload but where do you upload them too? When you connect to your site with an FTP client, like FileZilla browse to the location of the WordPress files. Getting there depends on your hosting account. You will usually not see the root of your domain first when connecting. You should look for the www or public folder, then you may even see multiple domains (if you have them). Look for the directory your WordPress files are in and then find the wp-content folder and finally within that the plugins folder. You can see the full path for WordPress installed in the blog directory in the image below:
After uploading the plugin go to the plugins panel and activate it. Now that you know how to do it this way how about a plugin that installs WordPress plugins and themes right from the dashboard? OneClick does just that and will work in most cases but if you have a highly functional plugin with multiple files and folders you still may need to resort to this method.
Similar Posts:
- Scheduled Backup Of Your WordPress Blog
- How To Add WordPress Themes From The Dashboard
- Installing WordPress Multiple Times On The Same Site
- WordPress Post Navigation Looks Bad On Single Pages
- Change Color Of Links In A WordPress Theme
If you liked this post, feel free to leave a comment that is relevant to the post or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Sorry but due to the spamming of a few all comments are moderated and will appear when approved and all drive-by comments will be deleted!
Comments
Good information.
Keeping up your good work.
Have a nice day.
Reply
Very nice blog. I have been here before but only rediscovered it when reviewing backlinks. You for being placed into my bookmarks. Thanks.
Reply
Thanks a lot for sharing this. I’m a total WordPress noob and Ive been having a hard time finding out these steps. Most sites only say, upload the file. I wish they could have been more specific like you. Thanks a lot!
Reply
Hi, very interesting facts about how to upload wordpress plugins and was searching for this information from a week. Now after reading your article i could easily do of my own.
very thanx
Reply
Great information! I haven’t had any problems with plugins yet, but it is great to know this.
Thanks!
Reply
What do I type in under Server Address and Administration password when i open Firezilla?
Reply
Jeff Replied:
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Kevin, the FTP information to put in Filezilla should be found in the control panel of you particular hosting account, or in a welcome email they sent you when you purchased your hosting package from them. All are different.
Reply
Thanks for the info. Very good to have! Great post.
Reply
thanks for the info…I will pass this one on to my readers as you made it real easy with the screen pics…
Reply
Hey, that’s an awesome article. I’m certainly not a technical person but the article was really understandable by me. Unlike most of the articles on the internet. Thanks for the information. Cheers
Reply
I’m new to blogging and I’m hoping to start a blog about financial information and retirement. This tutorial helped me a lot to understand the process uploading a plugin. Thank you for the information.
Reply
Great stuff. This explains a lot. Specially the edited screenshots, those helped me. I just started my e-commerce site. I saw some useful plugins on the net. But didn’t know how to upload them. The information are very useful to me. Thank you for sharing.
Reply
Good post. Helped me a lot to understand the process. Love the way you explain stuff using pics. Keep up the good work. All the best mate.
Reply
This is a great tutorial, anyone can understand the procedure because you’ve explained it very well. Thanks for sharing the information.
Reply
Great stuff, especially the edited screenshots.
Reply
I’ve realized that some Plugins work independently of your blog’s content and files, just adding a little something special to the page. Others require modification of content and files, including changes to your database. Before installing any plugin that will make dramatic changes, backup your database and files.
Reply
I’m totally new to this so forgive the dumb question but….
How do you figure out your host? How do you login to it?
Reply
Jeff Replied:
August 29th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
If you need to ask… then, if you do have a hosting account, I suggest you stay out of the control panel.
Reply
Mike Replied:
August 29th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Well, that’s not quite what I wanted to hear…lol! Is it possible that WordPress doesn’t allow you to install plugins unless you host it yourself?
Reply
Jeff Replied:
August 29th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Mike you can’t add plugins to a WordPress.com blog, only self-hosted blogs, which is what this site is all about.
Also remember that certain plugins may require you to set the correct file permissions for them to work with can be done with your ftp client in most instances. For example WP Super Cache requires you to set some files to 777, and then back to 755 for security reasons when you are done installing them.
Reply
In some few cases when installing plugins it is necessary to install only the files within the downloaded folder to your plugins direct rather than the entire folder. This is pretty uncommon now though.
Reply
Leave a comment
Drive-By comments will be deleted! Like "Thanks for sharing", "Nice post", or any other text that doesn't contribute to the discussion. If you ask a very specific question about your particular WordPress theme, it will probably be deleted. I can fix your WordPress site but for a price. If you ask a question like "Why don't my blog work right", it will be deleted. If you ask a question about your WordPress site without a leaving a link to it, it will be deleted. The point is to ask questions and or comment on the the actual content of the post, and to please use some common sense. All comments are moderated and will appear when approved. Thank you.