As your site evolves you may want to add new plugins to it thereby increases the functionality.  This is a simple and painless process.  First, be sure and check out the ratings of the plugins you are considering adding.  If you add a plugin that is not well supported you take your chances on whether that plugin will continue to work well or not.

There are several ways to upload a plugin including ftp, cpanel and automatically through your dashboard.  I’m going to give you simple direction for the automatic way to do it.  If you need more in depth directions there are many tutorials out on the web for using ftp and/or cpanel.

The first step is to log into your Word Press back end.  Once you have done that click on the menu that says “Plugins” and it will drop down revealing the sub menu.  Look for the menu that says “Add New.”  Clicking on this will bring up the interface for adding a new plugin.

You have two choices at this point:

1.  Search for a plugin using Google or another search engine and download it to your computer.  Then go to the interface and upload the plugin.

2.  Search for the plugin using the WP interface and install it right there automatically.

Both of these work well and are very self explanatory once you have found the interface where you upload them.

Once you have uploaded the plugin you will look for the link that says “activate” and click on this.  That will activate the plugin and give you access to it.

Keep this in mind…in order for a plugin to work you need to follow three simple steps:

1.  Find the plugin.

2.  Upload the plugin.

3.  Activate the Plugin.

There is a well written and much more detailed tutorial here.