Adding Plugins

I’m confused …… when you upload a plugin, there is generally no need to edit it, or if there is, this will be clearly defined in an accompanying readme.
Is this any plugin at all ?

It’s not every plugin, but about 80% of them. The “editing” I am doing is clearing out the spaces after the ?> as I have been told to do so before. When I haven’t done this, the plugins page alone shows the entire code.
One of the ones that does this for my is getContentforShowHide by Scripty Goddess. There are others that I have run accross, however this is the latest one that I am trying to implement.

Those ‘highlight the text’ phps files are the worst.
First thing, use a decent text editor. Never ever use Word. Notepad / Wordpad / BBEdit are okay.
Paste the text in, then make sure that the very first thing is
<?php
Anything before that will cause errors.
For possible whitespace at the end, the last line should be
?>
Place the cursor between the ? and the > and hold down the DELETE key for several seconds.
Then type the > and then ‘Save As’ whatever .php file it is.
After the >, don’t press any other key at all, Absolutely nothing.
This help ?

Nope. It is still displaying the code at the top of my page. You do make a great point about editing programs though. Hopefully others take heed of your advice.

Link please ?

https://www.inthebullpen.com/
I have activated the script so you can see the coding.

Ah!
That’s a .phps file.
The ‘s’ on the end is so you can see it – normally php is insible (so to speak)
From <?php to ?> cut that out and save it as a .php file, then do whatever SG says is the thing to do.
It should work then ?

Hey now, what are you using?? I just see a normal blog page. ??

If it were only something as easy as that. It is rightly classified as a .php file.
I’m not sure what you mean by cutting out everything from <?php to ?>. Wouldn’t that delete the entire code?

Southerngal, I’m activating the plugin and deactivating the plugin to test it out. I use Firefox, however I’ve tried it with IE as well and the same problem persists. I left the plugin activated for Podz to check it out however have since deactivated it.

What plug-in is it?

This is very strange…apologies for this, but have I got this right ?
– you save the file with a .php extention (such as ‘showhide.php’)
– you upload it to /wp-content/plugins
– you activate it
– and you see code all over the place ?

https://www.scriptygoddess.com/archives/2004/05/20/show-hide-more-with-wordpress/

Heh, yep Podz. That why it’s confusing the heck out of me. Not only did I save it as a .php file, I also renamed it to make sure it was a .php file in my FTP program. I am certain of one thing, it is a .php file.

Are there any “noob” methods to adding plugins that I may be missing? Is there some sort of modification I should make to my index.php file or another file?
It is my understanding that even if you haven’t installed it correctly via adding whatever might be needed in your index.php file it still wouldn’t place the entire code on the page.
Note: There are no additions to add to index.php in the instructions. This was just an example.