A plugin is just an extra bit of code that allows you to extend the functionality of your main WordPress installation by appending to the core WordPress code. That makes it sound more complicated than it really is though. Basically, if you find yourself limited with your WordPress blog somehow, chances are someone has coded a plugin that you can download and install (usually for free) that will add the missing functionality. Some examples of popular plugin functions would include:

• Anti spam filtering for the comments.
• Enhanced blog statisitics.
• Search engine optimization.
• And much more.

The first step in adding a plugin to WordPress is to actually find and download the desired plugin. There are many different plugin directories available, but the most comprehensive and up to date one is the official WordPress plugin directory. This is part of the WordPress.org Extend section (where you can also find other downloads to help extend the functionality and look of your blog).

On the official WordPress plugin directory, you’ll find a few different ways to find plugins:

1. Search Box: There is a search box at the top where you can type in key words or the actual plugin name if you know it and search their extensive collection of plugins.
2. Popular Tags: There is a popular tags sections on the left bar that has some of the more popular plugin categories that you can click on and view complete listings of each subject. This usually takes more time but you can sometimes find plugins you may want to install that you wouldn’t have even known about otherwise.

NOTE: It is very important that you pay attention to both your WordPress installation version number and the required WordPress version for the desired plugin. It is also a good idea to visit the plugin authors Web site to check for the latest version of the plugin if possible.

Once you have downloaded the plugin, installation instructions can vary depending on the complexity and author of the plugin, but for the most part, the following instructions will work with most plugin installations:

1. If the plugin is zipped or archived, use the appropriate program to extract all of the files somewhere on your local machine where you can easily find them.
2. Using your favorite FTP program, upload either the plugin file (usually a single PHP file) or folder to the plugin directory:
   • Auto-Install from Site Manager: Your plugin directory will be located at /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/ if you have used the auto-install of WordPress from your Site Manager.
   • Manual Install: Your plugin directory will be located at /wp-content/plugins/ from your WordPress install folder.
3. Login to your WordPress admin and click the Plugins link from the top nav bar. If you successfully uploaded your plugin, it should show up in your list here with the status set to Inactive.
4. Click the Activate link under the Action column for the plugin you wish to activate.

NOTE: Some plugins require extra steps once activated (i.e. inserting additional code in the template files). Please refer to the specific documentation included with each plugin to ensure proper installation, the above steps are just basic guidelines.

That really is all there is to it. With plugins, you can extend and customize WordPress to grow with you, allowing for a powerful yet intuitive blog interface and administration.

We are very excited to announce that we have recently upgraded our Managed Dedicated Server – Service Level Agreement. We are confident in the reliability of our hosting infrastructure, but with our SLA we can provide our clients with an added measure of reassurance and peace of mind.

In the unlikely event there is an unexpected outage, WestHost will credit the monthly service charge for the following month’s service up to 100% of the monthly service charge for the affected month. Please visit our Managed Dedicated Server SLA to view the recent changes.

What constitutes a network outage? A network outage is constituted by any outage in which a client is unable to access their site due to a failure in WestHost’s network. Please bear in mind that we cannot be held responsible for delays, interruptions, or other problems related to the general condition of the Internet.

This recent upgrade to our SLA reflects our ongoing commitment to providing a superior experience to our clients and is just another example of why WestHost is a leader in client satisfaction!

Apache’s XSSI (eXtended Server Side Includes) is a very useful tool for Web developers because it offers a simple, efficient way to do basic Web page scripting without taxing your servers system resources unnecessarily. It also does not rely on your visitors browser capabilities like some other client-side scripting languages (i.e. JavaScript). This means that your XSSI code will work no matter what restrictions the visitors browser has set. However, XSSI does have it’s limitations, but when used properly, it can be an incredible asset to both you and your Web site visitors.

What is XSSI

As mentioned above, XSSI stands for eXtended Server Side Includes. The official Apache documentation states that:

“This module provides a handler which will process files before they are sent to the client. The processing is controlled by specially formated SGML comments, referred to as elements. These elements allow conditional text, the inclusion other files or programs, as well as the setting and printing of environment variables.”

Basically this means that when a page is requested by a visitor to the Web site any XSSI commands embedded in that page are interpreted by the Web server before the page is returned. The commands are never seen by the visitor, only the results of them being interpreted. This enables pages to be dynamically generated (the difference between server-side code like XSSI and “dynamic HTML” is that XSSI code is dynamic only at the time the page is requested, while dynamic HTML pages can continue to change once they’re downloaded).

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