The aim of this short ninth step is to:

  1. Help you understand how plugins are used on blogs.
  2. Show you how to activate and deactivate plugins.
  3. Activate plugins.

What Are Plugins?

A plugin is a piece of software that does something specific to your blog.

Plugins extend functionality or add new features to your blog such as extra widgets, an easy way to add images to posts, ability to embed documents, add sliders, add contact forms, and more.

You don’t have to have plugins on your blog, however, activating some can make the blogging experience better for both you and your audience.  You don’t need to know anything about software or coding to use plugins; you can turn them on or off with the click of a button!

Plugins On Student Blogs

There are numerous plugins that you can activate in Plugins > All in your dashboard.  Plugins should only be activated if you plan to use the functionality provided by the plugin.  You shouldn’t activate plugins you don’t use.

Here is a list of plugins that are suitable for activating on your blog:

Plugin Used For
Pixabay Easy tool to quickly find and add Creative Commons images to your posts with attribution.  Once activated it adds a Pixabay icon to your visual editor which you use to search and insert images using Pixabay.
Easy Tables Quick and easy tool designed to help you add tables to your posts and pages.
Embed Any Document Enables you to embed any document into a post or page.
Lightbox for Images Adds an overlay that goes over the site and shows the larger version of the image when a reader clicks on the image so that readers can view without navigating away from the page.
Supreme Google Webfont Adds Google webfonts into a nice dropdown list in your visual editor which you can use to change your font type and/or font size.
Visual Editor Widget Adds a new ‘Visual Editor’ widget to Appearance > Widgets which makes it easy to add links, images, and more to a widget.

 

Note: If you are a long time blogger, you might recall the Compfight plugin for adding Creative Commons images. It has now been retired as it is no longer compatible with the newer versions of WordPress.

Activate Plugins

You activate plugins as follows:

1. Go to Plugins > All in your dashboard.

All Plugins

2.  Click on Activate below the plugin you want to use.

Activate the Pixabay plugin

Some plugins have an administration page where you can set options specific for that plugin.

  • Plugins with configuration options add a new item under the Settings menu.
  • Some plugins also add widgets to Appearance > Widgets
  • Click on the Documentation link on the plugin for more information on how to use the plugin.

3.  Click on Deactivate if you want to turn a plugin off.

Click Deactivate

Activate Plugins on your blog

Here is a list of plugins we recommend you activate:

You should always test a plugin once you’ve activated the plugin to see how it works and then deactivate the plugin if you don’t intend to use it.

To test Pixabay and Easy tables plugins, you need to write a new post.  The Pixabay plugin adds a Pixabay icon to your visual editor that enables you to quickly find and add Creative Commons images to posts.  The Easy Table plugin adds a tables tool to your visual editor for adding simple tables to posts.

To test the image widget and visual editor widget plugins you need to go to Appearance > Widgets and add their widget to your sidebar.

Remember, you’ll see numerous plugins that you can activate in Plugins > All in your dashboard.  But you should only activate plugins you plan to use.  Don’t activate plugins you don’t use.  If you decide to activate other plugins, remember to test the plugin after you’ve activated it and deactivate it if you don’t like it.

The documentation link under a plugin takes you to the support page that explains how the plugin is used.

Documentation

Your Task

  1. Activate Pixabay, Easy Tables, and the Visual Editor plugins in Plugins > All.
  2. Test each plugin and then write a post to discuss what you learned about plugins or tell us which plugin(s) you liked and why.  Remember to leave a link to your post in a comment here so we can have a look at your new post.

13 thoughts on “Step 9: Activate Plugins

  1. I learned that Plug-ins can be used to add new features or make it easier for others to interact with your blog. I activated Pixabay, Lightbox for Images, and Cool Timeline. I like that Pixabay can make it easier for my students to find and add pictures to the blog. Inserting images is pretty simple with this feature, and the the selection of images to choose from is fairly wide. I like that Lightbox for Images can make it easier for my students to view content on our blog without leaving the page. I also chose Cool Timeline with the thought of using it during social studies and a unique way to display student learning. However, I could not add Easy Tables and Visual Editor to my blog.
    https://lough18.edublogs.org/2021/09/01/plug-ins/

  2. Prior to doing Blogging Bootcamp, I had tested out both Pixabay and Compfight on my private test blog. I had determined at that point that Pixabay had higher quality photos and a wider selection of photos. During Blogging Bootcamp, I was reminded to activate the Pixabay plugin.

    I will not be using Compfight on any of my blogs. There are several reasons why I don’t like it, but it boils down to the variety of images and the mechanics of the plugin itself.

    As it so happens, I had already activated the Easy Tables plugin on my blog. It’s very useful for my Write Club Authors page because there are too many members to use a drop-down menu at this point.

    Since I don’t have a Pro account, I cannot activate the Visual Editor plugin. However, I do like the Supreme Google Webfonts plugin. I’m used to having all kinds of fonts on text documents, so I was pretty sad when I first started Edublogs and found out that it naturally does not have a font picker. It was a great day when I found the Supreme Google Webfonts plugin. Now I use it in posts to add humor or to change the emotion of the writing.

    Since I run a club site, I always make plugin posts in updates. I already made an update post using Photopeach, which sort of restricted me. That’s why I wrote my plugin reviews here. After all, it just wouldn’t make sense for a Write Club blog to have a random post about my plugin reviews when no one else knows what I’m talking about, and I couldn’t weave it into my explanation of why I chose specific plugins because, again, my blog update post was a link to a Photopeach slideshow this time.

    http://rhswriteclub.edublogs.org/2019/02/28/blog-updates-022819-super-short-i-swear/

    1. Hi Jalya, I can see how much you’re enjoying blogging. Thanks for all your great comments. I have left a comment on your blog.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *