One of the great things about WordPress blog is the level of customization available. If you want to take full advantage of the customization features, you need to know how to use WordPress plugins. There are thousands of plugins available for WordPress blogs which offer many different features, tools, and extended content. Plugins are easy to install and, once you have located a plugin that you wish to use, you can have it up and working in a matter of minutes. Soon enough you will be expanding the functionality of your blog and getting the most out of the WordPress platform.

WordPress is the ideal blog platform for plugin support. A plugin is an add on feature that can be installed on your blog to increase your functionality and available features. There are plugins available for just about anything that you can think of, from SEO (search engine optimization) plugins to extended spell checking. Plugins can be used to add more options to your posts, to track your visitors, to help organize links to other sites, to link your blog to social networking sites, and much more. Because plugins must be installed to a WordPress blog, they are only usable with blogs which are hosted off-site. WordPress.com blogs do not have plugin support.

One place to look for free plugins for your WordPress blog is the WordPress Plugin Directory. This site houses over 9000 different plugins which you can use in your blog. You can search through the plugins and sort them by popularity, features, ratings, etc. Once you have found a plugin that you want to use on your own blog you can download it and install it. To install it you should upload the files to the proper directory, /wp-content/plugins/.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-e-commerce/installation/

You can access any of your installed plugins through the Dashboard. You can also install new plugins directly from the Dashboard itself with just a couple of clicks. First login to your WordPress account and open the Dashboard. Click on Plugins, located on the left-hand side column, to see all of your installed plugins. You can access plugins which you have already installed through this page or you can search for and install new plugins. To find new plugins click on the Add New button at the top of the page. Now you can search for plugins and find the one that you want to install. Once you have found a suitable plugin, click the Install button and WordPress will automatically install the new plugin for you.http://codex.wordpress.org/Managing_Plugins

Check out the videos below to learn more about Blogging.

1. How to Choose a Blog Platform
2. How to Decide Which Wordpress to Use
3. How to Create a Wordpress Account
4. How to Create a Blog Post in Wordpress
5. How to Change The Header in a Wordpress Blog
6. How to Change The Theme in Wordpress
7. How to Use Wordpress Plugins
8. How to Understand Wordpress Comments
9. How to Create a Static Page in Wordpress
10. How to Create Blog Links in Wordpress