How to install OctoberCMS plugins

October CMS Plugin is containing various logical aspects like components and settings so you can include them and start using there functinality directly.

Plugins has collection of components which you can use in cms pages to build your frontend interface.

These Component houses businesss logic. For ex. insert, update, delte logic, Ajax callback handeling, conditional logic, google maps etc.

Installing free plugins

Its good idea to check out free plugins, if they are fit for your need just use them. If you need more features in your plugins then you can buy premium plugins and install them.

Let's start with installing simple Rainlab.Sitemap free plugin which allows user to generate sitemap.xml for SEO purpose.

1. Open Backend

To install plugin you need to login to your backend. User should have proper rights to change/install plugins.

You can go to admin panel of your website by adding /backend to your website's root site url.

[ if you manually configured different backend url then use it, In most cases its /backend by default ]

Backend URL

https://yoursite.com/backend

it will redirect you to backend module https://yoursite.test/backend/backend/auth/signin that is completely fine

backend_url

Use your backend credentials to login to your backend. on successful login you will be greated with dashboard.

2. Check Installed Plugins

Once you successfully login you can go to plugin settings by main navigation bar on the top

Settings > SYSTEM (section from left side menu ) > Update & Plugins

After navigating to this location you can see right side, there is plugin list which shows each plugin's name and description.

install_plugin

if you already installed any plugin you can see list of installed plugins here, to enable/disable one of already installed plugin you need to go to Manage plugins

manage

You can enable or disable any plugins from here. you can alos stop it's future updates from here.

enable_disable

3. Installing Plugin

To install new plugin you need to go to Install Plugin Tab

Navigate to this setting

Settings > SYSTEM (section from left side menu ) > Update & Plugins

install_plugin

Then you need to click install plugins button from right side.

It will bring you to install products page now by default PLUGINS tab will be selected.

plugin_settings

To get proper plugin name and details you can visit OctoberCMS Plugins it will show you plugin details and name of plugins which you can enter in search box to intall it.

i.e. we are going to install theme called sitemap theme details : Rainlab.Sitemap

Now search name sitemap in searchbox it will show respective plugins, you can click on it or use arrow key to navigate to that plugin and press enter or click on it.

plugin_search

It will download and stat installing plugin to you October CMS website.

plugin_install_process

Once Installation is done you can see plugin in installed plugin list.

sitemap_in_list

For Power users, You can directly install plugin from comman line if you happen to know plugin code for this sitemap plugin its Rainlab.Sitemap.

To install plugin directly from terminal you can use below command

php artisan plugin:install Rainlab.Sitemap

4. Installation Complete and Checking options of sitemap

Each plugin has different functionality and different sets of options. This sitemap has its own setting to set links on sitemap.xml for other plugins it may have different setting on different page

sitemap_options

Tip: Read out plugin document page how to configure and use plugin from directly author's / OctoberCMS's Plugin's page in our case its Rainlab.sitemap which can show us how to use sitemap plugin.

5. Using plugin components

sitemap plugin do not have any components but some plugins do have components as you can see in screen-shot blog plugin has post component. So, we will learn how to use there components in next tutorial posts.

blog_post_component

We will cover how to edit plugins in upcoming next tutorials posts.