About Plugins
There are a lot of really handy plugins and features that are available for WordPress that add new features and expand upon existing ones. We've included some of the most useful plugins in our Blogs network, and all you have to do is activate them in order to take advantage of their features.
Activating Plugins
To activate a pre-installed plugin, follow these steps:
- Log into your Dashboard
- Go to "Plugins" and then "Installed Plugins"
- Find the plugin you want to activate and then click on "activate."
- That's it!
Featured Plugins
Jetpack
Familiar to WordPress.com users, this plugin includes all of the following:
- Sharing features with Facebook, Digg, and other networking sites.
- LaTeX markup support.
- Site stats tracking.
- Twitter widget.
- Shortlinks.
- Grammar and style checking.
- YouTube and Vimeo embedding.
To add Jetpack, just go to "Plugins"->Installed Plugins, and activate Jetpack. You'll need to use your WordPress.com user account to connect. Don't worry: if you don't have one, you can register for one now.
Additional Plugins
In addition to Jetpack, there are other plugins that are not activated by default. Feel free to activate and use these plugins: they're there for you.
Requesting Other Plugins
UW Blog Network blog owners are limited to using the plugins that are present in the blog Dashboard. Owners can't install additional plugins. This is to ensure that we only install secure and compatible plugins that don't impact performance of the system. If you have any suggestions about a particualrly useful plugin you'd like to see installed, please email us at help@uw.edu. We can't guarentee that we can install it, but we'll take your recommendation under consideration for a future update.