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PLUGINS QUICKSTARTIf you are new to wordpress, or just want to get your blog out there with minimal effort, then this walk-through is for you. Sites offers a ton of options when it comes to plugins. Some of which are very ad-vanced and can take some time to set up. We’re going to show you 6 plugins that you can activate now, with very little effort, and have your blog ready to show to the world. Remember, your blog is always a work in progress, and at any time, you can start activating and setting up the more advanced plugints - but that should never keep you from getting your blog out there!

ACTIVATE THE PLUGINS!

The first step here is to log in to your Wordpress dashboard and activate the following 6 pl-ugins. Just go to the Plugins tab on your dashboard and click “Activate” next to these plugins:

• EASYFACEBOOKLIKEBOX - Allows you to put a “Like Box” on your side bar so people can like your fan page!

• GENESISSIMPLESHARE - Easily ads “social sharing” buttons to your posts - very little setup necessary

• MLSPCALLTOACTIONWIDGET - Easly add “calls to action” to your blog

• SIMPLESOCIALICONS - Add links to your personal social media accounts

• STYLES&STYLESGENESIS - These are 2 different plugins but they work together. Activate them both so you can customize the look and feel of your Genesis theme even easier

• *OPTIONAL*INSTAGRAMFEED- If you have instagram and want to set up a widget so people can see your feed on your blog, activate this and we’ll set it up

GO TO THE PLUGINS TAB

NOTE: If you have NEVER used wordpress before, before you proceed to the training below, YOU MUST WATCH THE “WORDPRESS FOR BEGINNERS” Training Videos located in your Sites

training portal - Watching these short 2 to 3 minute videos will give you a MUCH BETTER user experience. Wordpress is extremely powerful, but only if you know how to use it!

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SET UP MLSP INTEGRATION FIRST!

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SET YOUR PLUGINS!

Now its time to set these plugins up. The ones we have chosen to activate require very minimal setup, but there are some steps to it. The first think we’ll do is set up the new widgets that we have. Then we’ll set up the simple share icons and makes sure they look good, and finally, if you chose to activate the Instagram feed, we’ll look at that.

MLSP CALL TO ACTION

If you are brand new and don’t want to put in the time yet to set up an optin form on your blog, or you don’t have an autoresponder yet, this is a great option for you. You can easily get “calls to action” on your blog in seconds that link to MLSP system or product campaigns, or even a custom offer if you have one. They look like this:

The first thing you are going to want to do here is go to Settings -> MLSP Integration and fill in your MLSP Username so you have access to all of the MLSP campaign options. You don’t have to fill in the API infor-mation, we won’t be using that. Just fill in your MLSP Username and hit save.

After you set up your MLSP Integration, just go to Appearance -> Widgets to access the widget area.

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NOTE:If you don’t know what widgets are or how to use them, please visit the training portal and under

Wordpress Beginners, under the Appearance group, watch the video titled Managing Widgets

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MLSP CALL TO ACTION (CONTINUED)

Now that you are in your “widgets” area, just drag the MLSP Call to Action widget to whatever widget area you want it to show up on (typically this is your Primary Sidebar, but you may want to put one in the footer or anywhere else your theme allows) After you drag it over, from the dropdown, select the specific offer you want to show, click save and you are done! You can add as many as you want, but be tasteful about it. You don’t want your entire blog littered with these offers.

Now you can create a custom offer by filling in the fields as seen in the left image, or click the dropdown and select from any of the pre-made offers for you!

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EASY FACEBOOK LIKEBOX (CONTINUED)

I love this widget because it’s so easy to set up - all you do is put your fan page link in where it asks and click a few settings and you are good! Check out the image below to see the suggested settings.

TITLEPut in whatever you want, or leave it blank - up to you!

WIDTHI like to set the width wider than it needs to be because, as you’ll see in the next setting, we make it responsive so it will size down as it needs to for the users browser width.

EXTRAOPTIONSThese are all optional and just change the way your particular widget looks. I highly recommend you check Responsive so that your widgets sizes down for the view-ers screen size, but the rest are up to you. Check them out and see what you like!

FANPAGEURLBy default, there is someone elses fanpage URL in there when you drag the widget over - that’s to show you what you need to put in there for yours. You need to use your full fanpage link, but YOU CAN NOT HAVE A / AT THE END OF IT, OR ANY JUNK IN THE URL. If your widget isn’t working, check this setting first!If you don’t know how to find your Fanpage URL, use this link here to find your ID and then add it to the end of https://www.facebook.com/YOURFACEBOOKIDhttp://findmyfbid.com/

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SIMPLE SOCIAL ICONS

Just like before, in the widget area, you are going to drag the Simple Social Icons widget to wherever you want it to show. There isn’t much to this one and it’s very easy to set up

TITLEPut in whatever you want, or leave it blank - up to you!

COLORSYou have a lot of options here when it comes to colors. You can leave them as is or change them to match your blog colors. Your call - experiment and see what you like

SOCIALMEDIAACCOUNTSNot shown in this image are all the social media ac-count fields you have available. All you have to do is enter the FULL URL of your social media accounts in to their corresponding fields and hit save. It will look some-thing like this based on your individual settings:

SIZE&ALIGNMENTSETTINGSUp to you what you want to do here, but I WOULD RECOMMEND opening the links in a new window so they don’t leave your blog.

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GENESIS SIMPLE SHARE

Now, lets set up your simple share plugin so that people can easily share your content across social media. Navigate to Genesis -> Simple Share and you’ll see only a few settings. As far as the look of it goes, choose the settings you prefer. As for which buttons to show, again, that is up to you - just check or un-check whichever ones you want. The only recommendations I have on this plugin (and these are optional as well) is to have the icons display Before & After the content, and to have them display on your posts. You can also have them display on your pages if you want just by checking the box:

STYLES & STYLES GENESIS

You may remember activating these plugins and wondering what they do. Well, if you go in to Appear-ance -> Customize, you can see them in action. They add a TON of customizeable options that you can visually change to make your blog look how you want.PLEASENOTE: Each theme is different, so based on the theme you choose, some of the settings may not effect your theme. Thats it for these plugins, nothing to set up here.

*OPTIONAL* INSTAGRAM FEED

If you want to add an instagram feed to your blog, this is the way to do it. This is completely optional and a little bit more advanced because it involves actually connecting your Instagram account with your plu-gin here. Lets follow the steps below to get this set up. When you activated your plugin, you will will now see a new tab towards the bottom of your dashboard that says Instagram Feed - click on that.

Now, when you visit your individual blog posts or pages (depending on your settings) you should see some-thing like this:

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INSTAGRAM FEED (CONTINUED)

You are now in the settings area for the Instagram feed. There are a lot of options here, but we’re only going to use a few of them so don’t get overwhelmed. First thing you need to do is link your Instagram account. Its very easy. Just click on the large button that says “Instagram - LOGIN AND GET MY ACCESS TOKEN” - Follow the steps, and when you get your access token and user ID, paste them in the correct fields:

Save these changes and head on over to the Customize tab. Now, its up to you how you want to edit this page - all the settings just change the look and feel of your feed when you put it on your site. Personally, I pretty much leave everything as is with 1 exceptions. I change the “Photos” area to show 9 images in 3 rows - like this:

Save your changes, and you are done! Now, this plugin doesn’t come with a widget, so all you have to do is go back in to widgets, drag a Text widget to your sidebar, and paste this in there: [instagram-feed]

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PLUGINS QUICKSTARTThat’s it for our quickstart plugin list. This short list of plugins will allow you to show your Facebook Fan-page information, links to your social media accounts, gives users the opportunity to share your content, puts an instagram feed on your blog and allows you to quickly add “calls to action” so you can start gen-erating leads and sales!

What’s next? Well, you may want to eventually move on to some more of our advanced plugins. Take a look at the theme walkthroughs that we have and you’ll get a good idea of what some of the plugins we have can do for you. Also, on some of the more advanced plugins, you can find individual tutorials in the training portal under Themes, Plugins & Advanced Techniques.

OTHER PLUGINS TO LOOK AT:

Here is a list of some other plugins you can look at if you want to get more advanced - but with what you already have, your site should look great and you should be able to go live and get your content out to the world!

Jetpack - Jetpack is a great plugin written by the creators of Worpress. Its actually about 14 plugins in one. When you activate it, you need to connect with a Wordpress.com account (which is free to create). Particularly useful functionality that comes with this is, related posts, protect, and extra sidebar widgets. Take your time if you decide to work with Jetpack - it has a lot!

Monarch - Monarch is a social sharing/following plugin. Its not too hard to set up unless you want to use APIs to connect your social media accounts (which is not 100% necessary). If you choose to use monarch, WATCH THE TRAINING - you will no longer need Genesis Simple Share or Simple Social Icons that you set up earlier, as monarch will handle both of those.

ListBuilding - For list building (putting a form on your blog) you have a couple of options. WP Optin Studio and Optinmonster. WP Optin Studio is pretty simple and bare bones, where as Optinmonster is robust and has a lot of options. If you choose to use one of these, GO THROUGH THE TRAINING! It will greatly improve your user experience.