Plugins extend and expand the functionality of your blog.
Go to Plugins in your dashboard and click on Activate below the plugin you want to use.
Here’s an overview of the main Edublogs Plugins
3D Rotating Tag Cloud
The 3D Rotating Tag Cloud Plugin creates a beautiful rotating and animated representation of all your tags and categories which visitors can then click on to visit archives.
Once activated just drag and edit the new WP-Culumus widget into your desired sidebar in Appearance -> Widgets.
You can change it’s configuration by going to Settings > WP-Culumus.
Accept PayPal Donations
The Accept PayPal Donations plugin is designed to easily add a PayPal donate button to your blog’s sidebar.
Once activated you need to:
- Configure under Settings > WP PayPal Payment (remember to add your PayPal email address)
- Add the WP PayPal Payment widget to your desired sidebar via Appearance > Widgets
AddThis Social Share
The AddThis Social Share adds Social Share button to every post and page, so readers can easily share your content on their social networks.
Once activated you need to configure under Settings > Add This.
Classesbadges Student Badges
ClassBadges is a service for awarding students badges for all types of school and classroom milestones.
Using the ClassBadges plugin on Edublogs, students can easily display all of their earned badges in their sidebar.
To learn more about the plugin, check out this support documentation.
Compfight
The Compfight plugin is a quick and easy tool to quickly find, add and add proper attribution for Creative Commons images to your posts.
Once activated you use it as follows:
1. Go to Posts > Add New (or Pages > Add New)
2. Write your post.
3. Click on the Compfight icon.
4. Add your search term and click Search.
5. Click on S (Small), M (Medium) or L (Large) to add the image to your post.
6. Image is added to the post with proper Creative Commons attribution.
Contact Form (WP-ContactForm)
The Contact Form plugin is designed to add a straightforward contact form to your blog which allows visitors to your blog to send you an email.
Once activated you need to:
1. Go to Settings -> Contact Form.
2. Add your email address and click Update Options.
3. Go to Pages > Add New, create a Contact page and add the contact form code to the page.
4. If your theme doesn’t display page links in the top navigation you can either:
DOGO Content Widget
The DOGO Content widget plugin is designed to easily add DOGO widgets to your blog’s sidebar where you can display engaging content from one or more DOGO websites.
Add the preferred DOGO widget to your desired sidebar via Appearance > Widgets.
Feedburner FeedSmith
The Feedburner FeedSmith is designed to redirect your Edublogs RSS feed to Feedburner so you can easily monitor your RSS subscriber numbers.
You can also use it to add a Feedburner RSS widget and Feedburner Email subscription to your blog sidebar.
Once activate you need to go to Settings > Feedburner and configure. You’ll find step by step instructions for setting up Feedburner here.
The Footnotes plugin provides an elegant and easy to add footnotes to posts and pages.
Once you’ve activated the footnotes plugin you add footnotes to a post by simply typing them inline in square brackets like this: [1. This is a footnote.] Each footnote must have a number followed by a period and a space and then the actual footnote.
Formidable
Formidable Forms is a powerful plugin which allows you to easily create drag-and-drop forms, quizzes, polls, and tests – and so much more.
After activating the plugin, you will find see a new Formidable menu item added to your main navigation.
You’ll find step by step instructions for using Formidable Pro here.
Here’s how to create a contact page using the Formidable Pro plugin:
1 Go to Formidable > Forms.
2. Click on Add New, select Contact Us and then Create.
3. Hover your mouse over the Captcha field, now click Trash to delete it.
4. Now just edit the contact form to customize it to your needs.
- The * next to a field means this is required information to submit the form.
- Clicking on the * changes it to not required
- Clicking on the Title allows you to edit the name.
5. You can update the email address by clicking on Settings > Emails.
6. Once you’ve made all changes click Update.
7. Now go back to Formidable > Forms and grab your Contact Us shortcode.
8. Go to Pages > Add New.
9. Add a page title, your content, the Contact Us shortcode and click Publish.
Google Maps
The Google Maps plugin allows you to easily embed, customize, and use Google maps on your blog. You can also display local images and let your visitors get directions in seconds.
Once activated you can easily add Google Maps to:
1. Posts or pages using the Add Map icon
2. Your sidebar with the easy to use widget (via Appearance > Widgets).
You’ll find step by step instructions for using the Google Maps plugin here.
Image Widget
The Image widget makes it easy to add images and badges to your sidebar.
After activating, go to Appearance > Widgets, add the Image widget to your desired sidebar and use it to upload your image.
Improved Simpler CSS
The Simpler CSS mu-plugin enable users to add custom stylesheets to their blogs.
Once activated an Custom CSS menu item is added under Appearance.
Please note:
- This plugin is designed for those experienced in customizing CSS.
Live Stream
The Live Stream plugin is available on Edublogs Campus networks only and adds the Live Stream widget to Appearance > Widgets which can be used to show latest posts and comments in a continuously updating and slick looking widget.
If you get your students to assign common tags to posts you can use the live stream widget to pull posts and comments from all student blogs on a campus network onto the sidebar of any blog.
MCE Table Buttons
The MCE Table Buttons Plugin adds buttons to your advanced formatting toolbar on your Visual Editor to make it easy to create tables in your posts and pages.
Notifier Reviewer
The Notifier Reviewer plugin notifies administrator of posts pending for review.
Once activated:
1. Go to Settings > Notify for Review
2. Add your admin email address and click Save Changes.
Podcasting Plugin by TSG
The Podcasting Plugin by TSG plugin enhances WordPress’ existing podcast support by adding multiple iTunes-compatible feeds, media players, and an easy to use interface.
It also allows you to embed video and audio files inside an embedded player so your visitors can view them directly in their web browser.
Once activated:
1. Go to Settings > Podcasting.
2. Configure your podcasting settings and click Save Changes.
- There is no need to make any changes on this page if you only want to use it to embed video and audio files in an embedded player.
3. Go to Posts > Add New (or Pages > Add New)
2. Write your post.
3. Click on the Add Media icon and upload your video / audio file.
4. Copy the file URL and then close the Add Media screen.
5. Scroll down to the Podcasting module (below the post/page editor).
6. Paste the file URL and click Add.
7. Click Send to Editor.
8. Your video/audio file should look like the following:
9. When you view it in your post it should be embedded in a player.
Print Friendly and PDF
The Print Friendly and PDF plugin optimize your posts and pages for printing and lets your readers download or email a PDF version of your posts or pages.
Once activated, go to Settings > Print Friendly & PDF to customise your print button.
Here’s what Print Friendly looks like on a post:
Here’s are the Print Friendly options:
The RSS Just Better Plugin allows you to display RSS feeds in your posts or via a special widget which is better than the default RSS widget.
Once activated just add the new RSS Just Better widget into the desired sidebar via Appearance > Widgets and then configure the widget.
You can also use it to add an RSS to a post or page as follows:
1. Go to Posts > Add New.
2. Write your post then click on the HTML when you ready to add the RSS feed.
3. Add the following shortcode where you want the RSS feed to display in your post.
[RSSjb feed="..."] where “…” is the RSS feed you wish to display
Please note:
- Refer to these instructions for an extensive list of shortcodes you can use for extra RSS feed customisation options
4. Now click publish and you should see the RSS display when you view the post.
Scheduled Content
The Scheduled Content allows you to make certain post or page content available only at scheduled periods.
Once activated you’ll see a nice new ‘Schedule’ icon added to your Visual editor.
All you need to do is highlight the content then click on the ‘Schedule’ icon to set the date and time for the content to become available on any post or page.
After you’ve entered the schedule it inserts a shortcode around your selected content.
On the front end you’ll see a countdown clock indicating when the content will be released.
The Subscribe To Comments plugin allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
All the need to do is select the checkbox next to ‘Notify me of followup comments’ via email under the comment box on a post.
Once activated configure at Settings -> Subscribe to Comments and manage / view subscribers under Tools -> Subscriptions.
Supreme Google Webfonts
The Supreme Google Webfonts adds all 291 currently available Google webfonts into a nice dropdown list in your visual editor.
Simply select your Google Webfont and apply it to your text. Also includes font size selection to apply to Google Webfonts.
Once activated you use it as follows:
1. Go to Posts > Add New (or Pages > Add New)
2. Write your post.
3. Highlight the text you want to change.
4. Select the font type from the Font Family drop down menu.
5. Select the Front size from the drop down menu.
6. Here’s an example of font types and sizes changed in a post.
SyntaxHighlighter Evolved
The Syntaz Highlighter plugin is an Edublogs Campus plugin only that enables you to easily post syntax-highlighted code to your site without having to modify the code at all.
Widget Pack
The Widget Pack plugins makes available the ClustrMaps and Flickr widgets for use in your sidebars.
Once activated just add the new widgets to your sidebar via Appearance -> Widgets.
WP LaTeX
The WP LaTeX Converts inline latex code into PNG images that are displayed in your blog posts and comments. Use either [latex]e^{\i \pi} + 1 = 0[/latex] or $latex e^{\i \pi} + 1 = 0$ syntax.
Overview of available plugins
Plugins extend and expand the functionality of your blog.
Go to Plugins in your dashboard and click on Activate below the plugin you want to use.
Here’s an overview of the main Edublogs Plugins
3D Rotating Tag Cloud
The 3D Rotating Tag Cloud Plugin creates a beautiful rotating and animated representation of all your tags and categories which visitors can then click on to visit archives.
Once activated just drag and edit the new WP-Culumus widget into your desired sidebar in Appearance -> Widgets.
You can change it’s configuration by going to Settings > WP-Culumus.
Accept PayPal Donations
The Accept PayPal Donations plugin is designed to easily add a PayPal donate button to your blog’s sidebar.
Once activated you need to:
AddThis Social Share
The AddThis Social Share adds Social Share button to every post and page, so readers can easily share your content on their social networks.
Once activated you need to configure under Settings > Add This.
Classesbadges Student Badges
ClassBadges is a service for awarding students badges for all types of school and classroom milestones.
Using the ClassBadges plugin on Edublogs, students can easily display all of their earned badges in their sidebar.
To learn more about the plugin, check out this support documentation.
Compfight
The Compfight plugin is a quick and easy tool to quickly find, add and add proper attribution for Creative Commons images to your posts.
Once activated you use it as follows:
1. Go to Posts > Add New (or Pages > Add New)
2. Write your post.
3. Click on the Compfight icon.
4. Add your search term and click Search.
5. Click on S (Small), M (Medium) or L (Large) to add the image to your post.
6. Image is added to the post with proper Creative Commons attribution.
Contact Form (WP-ContactForm)
The Contact Form plugin is designed to add a straightforward contact form to your blog which allows visitors to your blog to send you an email.
Once activated you need to:
1. Go to Settings -> Contact Form.
2. Add your email address and click Update Options.
3. Go to Pages > Add New, create a Contact page and add the contact form code to the page.
4. If your theme doesn’t display page links in the top navigation you can either:
DOGO Content Widget
The DOGO Content widget plugin is designed to easily add DOGO widgets to your blog’s sidebar where you can display engaging content from one or more DOGO websites.
Add the preferred DOGO widget to your desired sidebar via Appearance > Widgets.
Feedburner FeedSmith
The Feedburner FeedSmith is designed to redirect your Edublogs RSS feed to Feedburner so you can easily monitor your RSS subscriber numbers.
You can also use it to add a Feedburner RSS widget and Feedburner Email subscription to your blog sidebar.
Once activate you need to go to Settings > Feedburner and configure. You’ll find step by step instructions for setting up Feedburner here.
Footnotes
The Footnotes plugin provides an elegant and easy to add footnotes to posts and pages.
Once you’ve activated the footnotes plugin you add footnotes to a post by simply typing them inline in square brackets like this: [1. This is a footnote.] Each footnote must have a number followed by a period and a space and then the actual footnote.
Formidable
Formidable Forms is a powerful plugin which allows you to easily create drag-and-drop forms, quizzes, polls, and tests – and so much more.
After activating the plugin, you will find see a new Formidable menu item added to your main navigation.
You’ll find step by step instructions for using Formidable Pro here.
Here’s how to create a contact page using the Formidable Pro plugin:
1 Go to Formidable > Forms.
2. Click on Add New, select Contact Us and then Create.
3. Hover your mouse over the Captcha field, now click Trash to delete it.
4. Now just edit the contact form to customize it to your needs.
5. You can update the email address by clicking on Settings > Emails.
6. Once you’ve made all changes click Update.
7. Now go back to Formidable > Forms and grab your Contact Us shortcode.
8. Go to Pages > Add New.
9. Add a page title, your content, the Contact Us shortcode and click Publish.
Google Maps
The Google Maps plugin allows you to easily embed, customize, and use Google maps on your blog. You can also display local images and let your visitors get directions in seconds.
Once activated you can easily add Google Maps to:
1. Posts or pages using the Add Map icon
2. Your sidebar with the easy to use widget (via Appearance > Widgets).
You’ll find step by step instructions for using the Google Maps plugin here.
Image Widget
The Image widget makes it easy to add images and badges to your sidebar.
After activating, go to Appearance > Widgets, add the Image widget to your desired sidebar and use it to upload your image.
Improved Simpler CSS
The Simpler CSS mu-plugin enable users to add custom stylesheets to their blogs.
Once activated an Custom CSS menu item is added under Appearance.
Please note:
Live Stream
The Live Stream plugin is available on Edublogs Campus networks only and adds the Live Stream widget to Appearance > Widgets which can be used to show latest posts and comments in a continuously updating and slick looking widget.
If you get your students to assign common tags to posts you can use the live stream widget to pull posts and comments from all student blogs on a campus network onto the sidebar of any blog.
MCE Table Buttons
The MCE Table Buttons Plugin adds buttons to your advanced formatting toolbar on your Visual Editor to make it easy to create tables in your posts and pages.
Notifier Reviewer
The Notifier Reviewer plugin notifies administrator of posts pending for review.
Once activated:
1. Go to Settings > Notify for Review
2. Add your admin email address and click Save Changes.
Podcasting Plugin by TSG
The Podcasting Plugin by TSG plugin enhances WordPress’ existing podcast support by adding multiple iTunes-compatible feeds, media players, and an easy to use interface.
It also allows you to embed video and audio files inside an embedded player so your visitors can view them directly in their web browser.
Once activated:
1. Go to Settings > Podcasting.
2. Configure your podcasting settings and click Save Changes.
3. Go to Posts > Add New (or Pages > Add New)
2. Write your post.
3. Click on the Add Media icon and upload your video / audio file.
4. Copy the file URL and then close the Add Media screen.
5. Scroll down to the Podcasting module (below the post/page editor).
6. Paste the file URL and click Add.
7. Click Send to Editor.
8. Your video/audio file should look like the following:
9. When you view it in your post it should be embedded in a player.
Print Friendly and PDF
The Print Friendly and PDF plugin optimize your posts and pages for printing and lets your readers download or email a PDF version of your posts or pages.
Once activated, go to Settings > Print Friendly & PDF to customise your print button.
Here’s what Print Friendly looks like on a post:
Here’s are the Print Friendly options:
RSS Just Better
The RSS Just Better Plugin allows you to display RSS feeds in your posts or via a special widget which is better than the default RSS widget.
Once activated just add the new RSS Just Better widget into the desired sidebar via Appearance > Widgets and then configure the widget.
You can also use it to add an RSS to a post or page as follows:
1. Go to Posts > Add New.
2. Write your post then click on the HTML when you ready to add the RSS feed.
3. Add the following shortcode where you want the RSS feed to display in your post.
[RSSjb feed="..."] where “…” is the RSS feed you wish to display
Please note:
4. Now click publish and you should see the RSS display when you view the post.
Scheduled Content
The Scheduled Content allows you to make certain post or page content available only at scheduled periods.
Once activated you’ll see a nice new ‘Schedule’ icon added to your Visual editor.
All you need to do is highlight the content then click on the ‘Schedule’ icon to set the date and time for the content to become available on any post or page.
After you’ve entered the schedule it inserts a shortcode around your selected content.
On the front end you’ll see a countdown clock indicating when the content will be released.
Subscribe To Comments
The Subscribe To Comments plugin allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
All the need to do is select the checkbox next to ‘Notify me of followup comments’ via email under the comment box on a post.
Once activated configure at Settings -> Subscribe to Comments and manage / view subscribers under Tools -> Subscriptions.
Supreme Google Webfonts
The Supreme Google Webfonts adds all 291 currently available Google webfonts into a nice dropdown list in your visual editor.
Simply select your Google Webfont and apply it to your text. Also includes font size selection to apply to Google Webfonts.
Once activated you use it as follows:
1. Go to Posts > Add New (or Pages > Add New)
2. Write your post.
3. Highlight the text you want to change.
4. Select the font type from the Font Family drop down menu.
5. Select the Front size from the drop down menu.
6. Here’s an example of font types and sizes changed in a post.
SyntaxHighlighter Evolved
The Syntaz Highlighter plugin is an Edublogs Campus plugin only that enables you to easily post syntax-highlighted code to your site without having to modify the code at all.
Widget Pack
The Widget Pack plugins makes available the ClustrMaps and Flickr widgets for use in your sidebars.
Once activated just add the new widgets to your sidebar via Appearance -> Widgets.
WP LaTeX
The WP LaTeX Converts inline latex code into PNG images that are displayed in your blog posts and comments. Use either [latex]e^{\i \pi} + 1 = 0[/latex] or $latex e^{\i \pi} + 1 = 0$ syntax.
Edublogs Support Manager @suewaters on Twitter
Posted in Help, Plugins