General WP Plugin installation problems...

When you try to installa wordpress plugin at your blog it sometimes can happen

that you'll receive several different error messages when you try to activate it or

already when you uploaded it.

Below are some reasons why could cause this problem and how you can fix this.

Reason #1:

When you downloaded a zip file for the plugin from a seller it doesn't automatically

mean that THIS is the zip file you can use for uploading the plugin inside the wordpress

admin area. Very often the seller puts pdf documents or other files inside this zip file

as well AND another zip file inside the downloadable zip file which has only the REAL

wordpress plugin included. Then this will be the zip file you have to use to upload

to your blog from inside your wordpress admin area.

Recommendation:

Also first unzip the downloaded file to check out if there are also other files included

in the unzipped folder other than only the files with php extension and maybe additional

folder the plugin requires and store the original downloaded zip file at your hard drive.

The best free unzipping tool I know which supports nearly all zip archives I know is 7Zip.

You can download it for free at

http://www.7-zip.org/



Reason #2:

It happens for some plugins that it wasn't possible for the programmer to create a file

structure which allow it to upload the plugin using the admin inteerface of your blog.

Then you have to upload the folder of the plugin with all files included using a FTP program

and after uploading the files just login to your wordpress admin area and activate it from there.

The best free FTP program is called FileZilla you can download for free at

http://filezilla-project.org/download.php

At this site you also find a link to the documentation of this tool on the left side.

If I find more reasons for wordpress plugin installations in the future I will add them to this article.