Plugins in WordPress

In this lesson we will look at adding plugins to the site to enable more dynamic content. Plugins can be added to the site as widgets which will appear in the sidebars or as enhancements to for example the text editor.

Use the buttons below to navigate through the lesson

There are numerous plugins available for the WordPress system, we will look at adding a translation plug-in called GTranslate to make the site accessible in many languages and a plug-in to create a custom contact form. The contact form plugin we will use is called Cforms which you can download for free at http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin/

Click Plugins. Click Add New. Type Gtranslate in the search box. Click Search Plugins. Click Details on gtrans. Click Install Now. The Plugin has been installed, click Activate Plugin. Click Installed Plugins. Click Appearance. Click Widgets. The installed Weaver theme has many widget areas, we will use the primary area. Click to expand. The Primary area contains the default widgets these can be removed if not required. Simply expand the widget and click Delete. Now drag and drop the gtrans widget to the primary area. Fill in title for this widget. Click Save.  Site front-end with translation widget in place click select language. Select Language. Turkish language selected. The page translated to Turkish. Click Show original to return the site to English. Click the X to close the translation widget. Site with a Facebook Like plugin added.

Contact Form

We will now install the cforms software to create a custom contact form, the software can be downloaded from http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin/ . Although this software can be added as a widget in the sidebar, we will add the form to the contact us page. In this lesson we will create a new form and demonstrate how to alter the fieldsets and change the look of the form. Cforms contact form is very customisable and in this lesson we will show just some of the many options, so once you have learnt the basics please carry on and explore the software to gain a better understanding of it’s capabilities.

Click Plugins. Click Add New. Click Upload. Click Browse. Click cforms. Click Open. Click Install Now. Click Activate Plugin. Click cforms11. Rename the default form to Contact us. Click the Edit icon on My Fieldset. Change the name to Address. Click to OK. Select field type Multiple lines of text. Click Update Settings. Remember to do this after all changes. The fieldset has been altered, but we need to reorder it. Hover the mouse over the order number then click and drag to the new position. Remember to click Update Settings. Click the Edit icon on the website fieldset. Change the field label to Telephone and delete the default value. Click to OK. Remember to update settings. Click Pages. Click Contact Us Page. Cforms has added it’s own icon in the editor for easy insertion of forms. Click cforms icon. Select form to be inserted and click Insert. To check the appearance of the form update the page and switch to the site front end.

The form has been added, return to the backend and we will change the appearance of the form. Click Styling. Select a theme file and click Select style. Switch to the front end to see how the style looks. Form with new style applied. In this lesson we have learnt to add plugins and display them in the widget area as well as in pages. In the next lesson we will learn how to update the WordPress software and apply updates to plugins and themes.