installing plugins and upgrading wordpress

If you are soooo newbie as you say you are… why is your first worry that ad thing? Instead of learning first the tool that you are using? Read the online manual: The Codex, go through all the admin panels and subpanels of you own admin interface.
Thats’ how you start. All the ste-by-step instructions are in the codex.

Also, if you’re going to be installing plugins and making other modifications to the “out-of-the-box” installation, you should get yourself a decent FTP client (Filezilla is free and great) and an HTML/CSS editor (Google for free ones; don’t use FrontPage).

The folder for plugins in is in your site directory — probably you need to login to your hosting services admin panel (not the WordPress panel) to browse through the directory structure.

Most people have a copy of their WordPress installation on their local computer, and make changes there (including adding plugins to the plugin folder), and then FTP it to the site.

If these basic concepts of web design/development are new to you, you will have a much easier time updating your site by taking the time to understand them. Some of them are explained in the Codex, but as they say on the Interwebs… Google is your friend.

Hope that helps.

PS Yes, if you update to 2.5.1 it *may* mess up your blog. But if you don’t, you will probably be vulnerable to security exploits, and as popular as WordPress is, that is a very real threat. So backup your database and files first, and then upgrade.

But if you haven’t made custom modifications to your theme or installed many plugins, there’s a good chance that the upgrade will cause no problems. But backup just in case.

Thank you StrangeAttractor. I will look into the admin panel of my hosting service. I will also look into the ftp and html/css editor even though I don’t know what that is. Yikes! The learning curve has been very steep.

I will also look into the ftp and html/css editor even though I don’t know what that is. Yikes! The learning curve has been very steep.

You might also consider getting a hosted blog at WordPress.com or another service such as Google’s blogger so that you can experiment with setting up a blog while getting familiar with basic concepts. Best way to learn is by doing.

And an HTML/CSS editor… all this refers to is a program that you can edit and test HTML (what web pages are written in) and CSS (the code used in the separate stylesheet file that controls much of the visual appearance of a website — e.g. styles.css).

HTML and CSS can be edited in a barebones simple text editor, such as NotePad, but most people working on websites prefer an editor that is designed specifically for working with HTML and CSS — such as formatting the code in a way that makes it visually easier to edit, and the ability to open your pages in a browser directly from the editor, etc. Dreamweaver is an example of a commercially sold editor (it’s expensive) but there are lots of free ones available on the web.

The FTP program is a program that you can use to upload files from your computer to your webserver. Filezilla is free and user-friendly.

Thank you for your patience. I have a quick question involving something simple: the quicktag for italicizing. When I hit the “i” tag, the highlighted word is bolded. I’ve played around with all the quicktags and none of them italicize. Is there a way of italicizing?

I don’t understand why that should happen, without seeing your actual site.

It’s possible (but weird) that your CSS file (controls the visual presentation and typography) has specified that the <i> tag or <em> tag (usually the same thing) will appear bold instead of in italics.

I have seen such idiotic themes…

It’s frustrating because that’s one simple thing that you expect to work. My theme is veryplainttext by scott. Anyway, I have more important things to worry about like how to improve traffic to my site.