Plugins are a great way to customize the look and functionality of any WordPress blog. They’re an easy way to do things like add Facebook functionality to your blog, block spam from your comments, and embed fill-in forms into your pages, just to name a few. WordPress makes it really easy to search for and add plugins. Here’s a step by step guide to installing plugins.

1. Select Plugins from the left-hand menu of  your Admin Dashboard, and then select Add New

2. Use the search box to search for the plugin you’re looking for. In this example, we’re looking for a specific plugin – the “youtuber” plugin. 

3. Find the plugin you want from the menu, and click on Install

4. When the popup window comes up, click on the various tabs to get more information about that specific plugin. Before you actually install the plugin, you’ll want to make sure it is compatible with the version of WordPress that you’re using.

5. Click on Install Now to install the plugin. If you’re feeling adventurous, you could also f...

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Recently, you may have seen the Facebook Like button on many of the websites and blogs that you frequent. They are a great way for your content to reach more people in a viral way by giving people the opportunity to post it on Facebook. Links to your various blog posts, or website, can now be effortlessly shared by anyone, and viewed by everyone in the Facebook Newsfeed. Here’s a tutorial, part 1 of a 4 part series on the Facebook Social Plugins, to show you how to get the Like Button up and running on your blog.

When it comes to Facebook’s social plugins, you have two options: use the iframe version, or use the XFBML version.

Iframe Version

The Iframe version of the Like Button is very easy to implement on a blog. Getting it working isn’t all that different from installing a widget on your site. The downside is that the iframe version of the button is stripped down in terms of features. For example, when someone clicks on the iframe version of the Like Button, they can’t add a comment. Facbook will add a...

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Google Analytics is a great, and free, tool for any Christian ministry blog and/or website. With it, you can see:

The traffic coming to your ministry blog

When people are going to your site, and how much time they’re spending there

What people are clicking on when they’re visiting your ministry’s website

Where your viewers are coming from – Google, Facebook, or from a direct link

Which pages, articles, and links on your church or ministry site are popular

Having all of this information can help accelerate Christian ministries by increasing their effectiveness as an online resource. For example, knowing which articles from your ministry blog are attracting the most traffic can help you tailor the content of your website to your audience.

So here is one way to get Google Analytics up and running on your your ministry’s self hosted Wordpress blog. For this tutorial, I’m assuming that you’re using Wordpress version 2.9.

1. Use this link to get a Google Analytics account – Google.com/analytics. You can use ...

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Google Analytics is a great, and free, tool for any Christian ministry blog and/or website. With it, you can see:

The traffic coming to your ministry blog

When people are going to your site, and how much time they’re spending there

What people are clicking on when they’re visiting your ministry’s website

Where your viewers are coming from – Google, Facebook, or from a direct link

Which pages, articles, and links on your church or ministry site are popular

Having all of this information can help accelerate Christian ministries by increasing their effectiveness as an online resource. For example, knowing which articles from your ministry blog are attracting the most traffic can help you tailor the content of your website to your audience.

So here is one way to get Google Analytics up and running on your your ministry’s self hosted Wordpress blog. For this tutorial, I’m assuming that you’re using Wordpress version 2.9.

1. Use this link to get a Google Analytics account – Google.com/analytics. You can use...

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Embedding Google Maps onto your ministry blog is a really easy way to show people where all of your events and outreaches are happening without them navigating away from your site. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to embed a map onto your Wordpress blog.

1. Go to www.maps.google.com

2. Enter the desired address in the search menu and click Search Maps

3. Select Link in the upper right hand corner to open up the Link options

4. Copy all of the code in the Paste HTML to embed in website box. This is the embed code you’ll use in the next step.

5. Install the embed code you copied in step 4 into your blog, just as you would for any other widget. Here’s a video to show you how to install a widget into a Wordpress blog using Wordpress version 2.9.

Have any other ideas for integrating Google, maps, and widgets into your ministry blog? Let us know.

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