Once the WP-PostRatings plugin is activated a few different things will happen:

• The Ratings widget will be available in the Appearance > Widgets control panel.
• The Ratings menu block will be in the lower left corner of your Dashboard.  This menu block contains a variety of different

To view help instructions on the Ratings widget and settings, just click on the following provided links:

• Ratings Widget help
• Ratings Settings help

You can also locate the specific help post in the Categories menu on this site.

• Creation of polls
• Management of polls
• Basic styling of poll elements right through the user interface
• More advanced styling and layout control using poll templates (suggested for advanced use only)

The WP-Polls plugin has already been enabled on all sites.  All features provided by this plugin are available as soon as any blog is created.  The settings for these items are located in the Polls menu block at the lower left corner of the Dashboard.

To view help instructions on the Polls widget and settings, just click on the following provided links:

• Polls Widget help
• Polls Menu Block help

You can also locate the specific help post in the Categories menu on this site.

Once the Sociable plugin is activated a few different things will happen:

• The Sociable configuration options will be available in the Settings > Sociable control panel.
• All posts and pages on your blog site will display a footer that contains icons and links to:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Blogplay

These are not the only bookmarking links available, though.  A total of 99 links to different bookmarking sites are available through the Sociable settings.

To view help instructions on the Sociable settings, just click on the following provided link:

• Sociable Settings help

You can also locate the specific help post in the Categories menu on this site.

• Permalink views
• Permalink views from search engines
• Home views
• Archive views
• Category views
• Tag views
• Feed views
• Comments
• Pingbacks
• Trackbacks

Reports based on the above information are then generated and can be displayed in a widget on your blog site, if you so choose.

Once the Popularity Contest plugin is activated a few different things will happen:

• The Popularity Contest widget will be available in the Appearance > Widgets control panel.
• The Most Popular Posts menu link, which is a link to a variety of reports generated by the Popularity Contest plugin, will appear in your Dashboard menu block.
• The Popularity configuration option will be available in the Settings > Popularity control panel.
• All content on your blog site will display a footer that details the popularity ranking of that particular post.

To view help instructions on the Popularity Contest widget and settings, just click on the following provided links:

• Popularity Contest Widget help
• Popularity Settings help

You can also locate the specific help post in the Categories menu on this site.

Most “false positive” comments, those valid comments that Akisment erroneously marks as spam, occur on new posts.

Typically, older comments are targeted by spam agents as these posts “fall off your radar” after awhile – you’re just not as likely to return to posts that are six months old as the topic becomes exhausted.  When spam agents attack these areas, you will receive notification of this repeatedly within your spam queue, which can become an issue for large blogsites.

When this Automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month option is enabled, these notifications will not appear in your queue – Akismet will just automatically delete the spam and not tell you about it.

Configure Akismet

To configure Akismet, do the following:

• From within your Dashboard, click on Plugins > Akismet Configuration.
• Select the Automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month checkbox.
• Click the Update Options button.

• Popularity Contest: enables ranking of your posts by popularity, using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity
• Sociable: automatically adds links on your posts, pages, and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites
• WP-Polls: Adds an AJAX polling system to your blog.
• WP-PostRatings: adds an AJAX rating system for your blog’s post/page

Activate a Plugin

To activate a Plugin, do the following:

• From within your Dashboard, click on Plugins. This will automatically open up a list of all installed Plugins.
• Select the desired Plugin by clicking on its corresponding Activate link.
• The background on the newly activated Plugin will change to white
• Depending on the Plugin, a Settings link may also be made available.  Some Plugins may require configuration.  If a Settings link is available, click on it to go into the Settings and make any changes you desire.

Deactivate a Plugin

• From within your Dashboard, click on Plugins to open your list.
• Locate the Plugin to be deactivated and click on its corresponding Deactivate link.
• The background on the newly deactivated Plugin will change to grey

Plugins differ from Widgets in the fact that the code used is typically more complicated.  Some Plugins actually create Widgets.  Other Plugins may simply perform tasks in the background of your blogsite and show no real visible effects on the screen.