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Hi, just Carl today with a quick look at the beauty of managing plugins in WordPress so you have some familiarity with it. So, go to the Plugins section again and find the plugin your interested in managing. You have a couple of few options available to you, depending on the plugin. First, you can go directly to the settings page for the option. This is a shortcut, but the majority of plugins have their settings page listed in the side bar. You can "deactivate" the plugin, which just means it goes to sleep and will not doing anything until you re-activate it at some point. Or you can "edit" the plugin. Don't do this. This will take you to the code page Editor where you can wreak havoc on your whole site. So, yeah, don't ever, never do this. Once you deactivate a plugin, the options change. Your options now are Activate, Edit (again), and a bright red Delete. Activate brings the plugin back from sleeping, with all its settings just as they were before. It is immediately active and working again. Delete brings up a warning screen. If you are sure you have no further use for the plugin, click Yes, Delete these files. One last thing, keep your use of plugins under control it's tempting to add shiny new plugins. But remember, having a huge amount of plugins creates two significant problems: They can be in conflict with each other, which can cause your site to act in odd ways, and Too many plugins can really slow down your site. Google hates slow sites, and so do your visitors. So, less is more and keep it simple. And that covers managing plugins!

Installing plugins is very easy in WordPress, so I just wanted to give you a quick overview of the process. From the sidebar, click Plugins and select Add New. First, you search for a plugin that you want to install (you can browse, too, to discover new plugins, and/or review the WordPress list of "featured" plugins). Browsing for new plugins can be fun, but that's for another day and, in general, I don't recommend it. When you find your plugin, you have two options: you can install with one click or you can get more information first. If you click the More details link, a "lightbox" popup appears to show you the details about the plugin. Move through the tabs -- such as Description, Screenshots, and Reviews -- to gather intel. Pay special attention to the compatibly section and reviews area. One thing to note: WordPress will warn you if the plugin hasn't been updated in a long time, such as a year or two. Avoid such plugins like the plague. WordPress may also tell you that the plugin is incompatible with your version of WordPress. This can either mean that you need to update your WordPress install or that the developer of this plugin needs to update their plugin. Click the Install Now button and WordPress will immediately install it. Another option is, in cases where you have already downloaded the plugin as a compressed zip file onto your computer, is to upload it. Use the Upload button to do so. Click Choose File to browse to the plugin .zip file (it's more than likely in your downloads folder or on your desktop). When the file has finished uploading, click Install Now as before. Once the plugin has been installed (using either method), click the Activate Plugin link to finish the install process. Now the plugin is appears in your active plugins list. You're done! That's it, as promised, very easy to find and install plugins and as we'll learn next, it's also very easy to uninstall them.

Welcome to the Paid Templates adventure. Previously, we’ve talked about themes in general, how to find great free themes, and how to install themes. Here, we discuss the pro’s and cons of paid themes and where to find the good ones. For around US$25 to $45 or so, there are hundreds of attractive theme options, many with great author- and book-specific features.

In this adventure, we are going to go over the six plugins that I feel are required to have at the outset. I don't think anyone would disagree with my list, but they may add one or two to it. These are the ones you need from the start to be fast, safe, and smart These plugins cover site performance (speed), anti-spam, SEO (search engine stuff), social media, and data safety (backups).

In this adventure, we take a look at some great optional plugins for WordPress that will increase your efficiency and enjoyment of WordPress as well as your day to day experience with it. I call these plugins, "nice to haves." Except where noted, these plugins are 100% free.

Learn how to install Wordpress on your domain. Not on wordpress.com. That's where the people who are NOT serious about this go and get themselves a "free" website. Don't be that person. No, this is Wordpress.ORG, and what that means to you is only one thing: damn good web software with, I don't know, a million plugins?

When it comes to your blogging platform, where you’ll host say, chapters of your books, your book promotions and sales, your blog posts and videos (if you choose to use them), your mailing list sign-up form and all that, choose carefully. You want a platform one that is well established, easy to use, with wide support among users (forums and training) and technologies (plugins and themes). To me, the only sensible answer is WordPress. But to be fair, we'll also take a look at the alternatives.

Your domain name needs a place to live. It’s the name of your store, so to speak. Now you need that actually store so you can hang your domain name “sign” and start to be a part of your community. So, to you, the web host is where your site lives and that’s about it. In reality, it’s a building filled with offices and connected servers and a lot of network and security software. This is important to know because should a server crash, your site would go down, if only temporarily. You want, therefore, to hire an ISP, that stands for Internet Service Provider, who uses redundant servers, top of the line security, and so on. To keep YOU up and running.

Advice on finding the best place to register your author domain name.

So, if you are really new to all this, you might be asking yourself, “What are these mysterious things called domain names?” Digging deeper, you might realize that the REAL question is, “What is a domain, exactly, and is this something I should be thinking about?” Yes, by gosh, it is. Let me tell you why.