Search, Install, Activate Free Plugins

How to Search For, Install, and Activate Plugins in WordPress

In this tutorial, I’ll show you exactly how to search for new free plugins from the official WordPress.org plugin repository. I’ll also show you how to install and activate these free plugins.

If you’ve purchased a premium plugin and need to know how to install the plugin .zip file, learn how to do that in this post.

How to Search for Free Plugins

WordPress makes it extremely easy to search for free plugins and at the time of this writing, there are over 48,000 free plugins available. Wow! No wonder WordPress such a popular platform!

Go to Dashboard–>Plugins–>Add New

There are two different “Add New” links. You can click either one and they’ll take you to the plugin listing page.

How to search for free WordPress plugins

You’ll see the plugin listing screen which shows you the “Featured” plugins first, a few ways to filter those results, and also the plugin search box.

You can enter any keyword, phrase, or even plugin name in this field. A few examples you might use are “image gallery”, “contact form”, “social sharing”, or any other feature you might be looking to add to your WordPress website.

How to search for WordPress plugins

In this example, I’ve entered the plugin name “Foo Gallery”. You can see that this plugin is the first result but you’ll also notice that another one of our other plugins is listed there too. That’s because we’ve used the same “Foo Gallery” keyword in the other plugin description (because they work seamlessly together) and also because the plugin author, “FooPlugins” is listed on both.

WordPress plugin search results

How to Install and Activate a Free Plugin

To install a free plugin from the search results, simply click “Install Now” and then “Activate”. See exactly how to do it in the short video below.

I hope this tutorial helped you learn how to search for, install, and activate free plugins in WordPress. You might also want to check out my growing list of Resources and Tools I use in many of my projects.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to my YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook.

Don't get left behind. Join over 6,000 other WordPress-powered blog and business owners.

Don't get left behind. Join over 6,000 other WordPress-powered blog and business owners.

Receive actionable plugin and marketing tutorials for your WordPress-powered business. All quality. No bullshit.

You're almost there! Check your inbox to confirm your subscription.

Leave a Comment





This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.