A plug-in (from the English plug-in) is a whole class of applications that are an additional software module to any application. Such an application can be, for example, a browser, a graphics editor, an audio player, or even a website management system. Depending on how the plug-ins are connected in a particular application, the methods of their installation are also different.
Instructions
Step 1
If you need to install the plug-in in your browser, use the built-in functions of this application - access to them is organized through the menu of the web browser. For example, to install a plug-in in Opera, open its menu and select "Select extensions" in the "Extensions" section, after which the browser will load a page with a catalog of available plug-ins. Select the one you want, and then click on the green button "Add to Opera" - it is on the page with the description of the plug-in. The program will do the rest by itself. All modern browsers have similar functionality.
Step 2
To add plug-ins to programs that do not provide functions of this kind built into the menu, place the plug-in in a specially designated folder. Such a directory is usually located in the root directory of the application - for example, in the popular graphics editor Adobe Photoshop, this folder is called Plug-Ins and is located on the system drive at Program Files / Adobe / Adobe Photoshop.
Step 3
You only need to copy the plug-in to the folder reserved for extensions on your own only if it does not have an installer - an executable program that itself unpacks all the necessary files from the archive and places them in the desired directory. For example, if a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop has an 8bf extension, you will have to move it to the folder specified in the previous step "manually", and if it has an exe extension, just double-click the file to launch the installer.
Step 4
Installation of plugins for site management systems is somewhat different from the methods described above, since it is performed on a remote server, and not on a local computer. Usually such systems have special scripts, access to which is organized through the control panel itself. For example, immediately after logging into the popular CMS (Content Management System) Joomla, the administrator is taken to a page in which to access the plugin management section, click the Extansion Manager icon. Then you need to select the location of the file with the extension and click the Install or Upload & Install button, and the rest of the system scripts will be done in automatic mode. At the end of the process, you will only have to activate the installed plugin by selecting it in the general list.
