Today, you’ll finally get the final episode of the Must Have WordPress pluigins series. You’ll learn how to install WordPress plugins via FTP and cPanel. Also, you’ll learn how to install the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin and the WP Mobile Detector one. Since all the mobile stuff is really getting momentum, I’ll start right from that. Rest assured that it’ll be to the point and you’ll not waste your time here.
WP Mobile Detector
As you may know, smart phones are all the rage now. Plus, the iPad mania is rolling in. So, it really makes sense to go the extra mile and install the WP Mobile Detector plugin, which will allow you to present your site in a mobile friendly format. Doing so, people will be able to easily check your site on the go. Hopefully not while driving 🙂
So, less talk, more work! Let me tell you more about the plugin and what sort of cool things it can do for your site.
For starters, the plugin automatically detects if your visitor is using a feature phone or a smart phone (like the iPhone) and delivers one of its mobile themes. You can specify which one. The WP Mobile Detector recognizes over 5,000 phones. It actually contains the features of a few plugins that were used for the same purpose previously. Thus it takes all the power and puts it all in your hands.
If you think that it’s hard to set it up, dude, you’re wrong 🙂 It’s like a few clicks and off you go.
Watch for yourself:
So, here are the options of WP Mobile Detector:
- it automatically and magically 🙂 detects a mobile device;
- it knows when a feature phone or a smart phone reaches your site;
- it recognizes over 5,000 + mobile devices;
- it allows to monitor advanced mobile stats (unique visitors, visits, mobile search engine bots, etc);
- it seamlessly formats your site and re-sizes its images;
- it also has 7 mobile themes build-in;
- it allows you to choose either one of those 7 pre-installed thems or create your own.
If you feel like getting more features, you can just go ahead and check the WP Mobile Detector premium version of the plugin. No, they did not pay me to recommend it, but it’s a really nice thing, guys.
Take a quick look at the following video that actually shows how WP Mobile Detector premium works:
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
This plugin allows you to show your blog’s related posts in a super dooper neat way Apart from that, it gives you a plethora of other options that come in really handy when you need them BADLY:
- Templating – you can make the plugin look just like you need it;
- Custom post types – you can make the plugin appear anywhere in your blog;
- Advanced algorithm – it scans your site and finds all the related content;
- Caching – the plugin caches the related posts data, so next time when the same query is being served up, it just shows the stuff that has been created before;
- Related posts in RSS feeds – the plugin makes it possible to use the feature not only the regular way but you can also show your related content right in your RSS feeds;
- Disallow certain tags or categories – sometimes you just don’t want to serve up any related stuff from particular tags or categories.
And one more cool thing about the plugin , guys. The Matt Mullenweg (you know who I am talking about?) is really positive about the plugin and that is a really big thing to have such an attitude from such a person. 🙂
Installing the plugin is nothing special, so chances are you won’t have any problems with that, which is always a good thing.
And ma video to wrap it up.
How to install plugins via ftp or simply the admin panel
There’re basically 2 ways of installing plugins in WordPress. You can do it either via your WordPress admin panel or FTP. The easiest way would be to do it it with the help of your WordPress admin panel because it involves literally a few clicks (see the details in the video below).
The problem is that life happens and your WordPress maybe installed improperly and it can prevent you from being able to install plugins simply via the admin panel. In that case you need to get your hands dirty and install it via FTP.
No panic! FTP does not stand for some mass destruction weapon. 🙂 It just means File Transfer Protocol. Simply put, it’s just a different way of uploading files. You can use FTP clients for uploading files that way. My favorites are CuteFTP, FileZilla and Total Commander (the last one is a bit more advanced). The good news is that if you’re using a hosting provider that is worth the money you paid for it, you should have access to your control panel on the hosting server. The control panel is usually referred to as cPanel. So, in case you’ve got that cPanel thing, you won’t need to download or install anything extra (like FileZilla or CuteFTP). You can just go to your cPanel and do the magic (uploading your WordPress plugin) right there. And again my video comes to the rescue. Just see how to do that.
As always, if you think that the post is worth it, please share it (tweet, like and tell your friends about it :)).
And one more question for you. Which works best for you: installing via FTP or your WordPress admin panel? For instance, while installing Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
