[wp-hackers] WordPress plugin list

[Owen Winkler]

I don't thing that a central plugin site is a bad idea, but I agree with
scripty-Jenn about keeping the most up-to-date versions of things on my
own site.  I don't want to visit this centralized repository (or any
other site) every time I update something or improve my documentation.

The best way for me to do this would be to register my plugin once at
the repository with the location of my RDF file (it's like a pirate's
.nfo file, arrr!) and  the repository could check for updates
periodically.  I'm not enthralled with the idea of losing hit counts of
people scoping my plugin on my own site, but I think I can trade this
off for more usage if there is decent reporting on the central site.

I'm not crazy about the idea of a plugin reporting my plugin list to a
central repository.  This seems wrong.  I realize that the in-use
figures might be useful to the devs, but that's not anything they
couldn't figure out by looking at download totals.  Rather than list all
of the things I don't like about this, I'll just enter my vote in as
"plugin reporting - BAD".

If someone is working on this now, please keep in mind that some plugins
install files (and sometimes whole directories) into places other than
the plugin directory.  Alex's style-switcher, for example, uses a custom
directory structure.  Architecting a script that puts all of the files
into the correct places automatically will be a significant task if
there isn't already a tool that does this.  Including warnings for
overwriting files in wp-admin is just one thing that this installation
script processor should handle.

You should also integrate links to support forums and a bug tracker for
each plugin, and optionally provide facilities for hosting these items,
with moderator privileges for the plugin developer.

It would do well to integrate all of this with the plugin manager that
we had previously been fussing over.  I'm sure that's how the discussion
began, anyway.

Owen