Cannot see plugin menu on toolbar

• 

  ebanks90 · Member · May 13, 2015 at 3:15 am

  • Copy link
  • Add topic to favorites

  In my admin area for my blog I cannot access the ‘plugin’ menu in order to install and setup my plugins. I have been doing some reading and it may be because I signed up my blog on wordpress.com, instead of wordpress.org. I did not know the difference. I bought the premium package, and I intend to connect the domain name I just bought as the main domain. It is hosted on 1and1 server. What do I need to do to host the blog on that domain name, and be able to get the plugin option on my admin toolbar.

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

• 

  rachelmcr · Member · May 13, 2015 at 10:02 am

  • Copy link

  Hi there,

  WordPress.com blogs have a number of features inspired by popular plugins, but additional plugins can only be installed on self-hosted WordPress blogs (using the software from WordPress.org). You can learn more about WordPress.com and WordPress.org to find out more about the differences between the two.

  If you let me know what plugins you want to use, I can help you find out if those features are already available here at WordPress.com.

  If you need to be able to install plugins, though, you will need to find a different website host for your blog and connect your domain there. If you want to move the content from your blog here at WordPress.com to your new host, we have a guide for Moving to a Self-Hosted WordPress Site to walk you through that process.

  Please let me know if you have any questions about that. :)

• 

  ebanks90 · Member · May 13, 2015 at 1:31 pm

  • Copy link

  Thank you :) The features I am primarily looking for are
  1. user ability to create an account on our blog in order to post and share and stuff like that
  2. social media widgets, so they can share the content to their social media
  3. contact forms

  I saw the widget portion where you can add a couple functions like this, but I could not find them on my page or the admin side after they had been added. Maybe it has something to do with my theme?

  Our domain name and old blog are hosted on 1and1. I will try and follow those steps to move it there- but what it still have all the wordpress tools? (Just getting used to this)

• 

  rachelmcr · Member · May 13, 2015 at 2:04 pm

  • Copy link

  Hi there,

  The three featured you mentioned are already built into WordPress.com, so you’re welcome to use them with your site here:

  1. user ability to create an account on our blog in order to post and share and stuff like that

  On WordPress.com, you can invite contributors to your blog so they have their own account where they can publish blog posts on your blog.

  2. social media widgets, so they can share the content to their social media

  You can add Sharing Buttons to your blog so readers can click a button to share each post to different social media sites. WordPress.com also has a built-in Publicize feature to automatically share your posts to your own social media accounts if you’d like.

  3. contact forms

  You can use the WordPress.com Contact Form feature or embed Wufoo contact forms on your blog here.

  Please let me know if you have any questions about setting any of those up. :)

  Our domain name and old blog are hosted on 1and1. I will try and follow those steps to move it there- but what it still have all the wordpress tools? (Just getting used to this)

  If your old blog uses WordPress, and you want to keep it hosted at 1and1, you’ll have all the features that are part of the WordPress.org software. You can also install our Jetpack plugin to get some of the most popular features from WordPress.com on your blog there, if you want.