[wp-hackers] WP Plugin Manager

[drDave]

After talking with Nuclear Moose last week and since it turned out he 
was a bit lagging on his plugin mgr project (read: hadn't had time to 
start it yet), I gave it a shot over the week-end... Since hopefully 
Moose will eventually have a chance to help out on it, I have mainly 
focused on anything non-UI related and left all the niceties to be done 
in some near future.

Basically, what I wanted most, beside a simple browseable, searchable 
public plugin DB, was a tool that users could install on their own 
server to help them keep track of their plugins installed. Ideally, 
such a tool would also handle transparently install and removal of 
plugins...

So far, I have implemented:
- a DB that mostly works around Authors and Plugins records, storing 
any relevant data I could think of.
- an *extremely* basic frontend: http://unknowngenius.com/wp-plugins/
- a general backend to manage the DB from a "super-admin" level (it 
will ultimately only be used by a few administrators, not by general 
developers who want to upload their plugins into the DB).
- a "client", installed locally in your WP install, that connects 
directly to the plugin DB to keep track of the latest releases and 
enable "one-click install/removal" (if appropriate permissions have 
been set). Among other things, the client will tell you when a newer 
version of installed plugins is available.

What I am planning to add very soon:
- a developer backend (which will only let you modify plugin data for 
your own account).
- a better web frontend (searchable, sorted etc).

Features I am planning to improve/add:
- a tracking system of successive plugin updates that would let 
developers add notes for each versions etc
- an improved "one-click-install" system that would handle gracefully 
more complex installs, upgrades (keep preferences) and removal... 
probably using a very simple "install" script.
- ??

Not sure if all this is very clear, best is probably to go look and 
play with it.

You can see the frontend (not much to see now) here:
http://unknowngenius.com/wp-plugins

You can install and play with the Plugin Manager... simply download and 
drop this file in your WP root and browse to it:
http://unknowngenius.com/wp-plugins/wp-plugin-mgr.zip

Feel free to go play with the admin tool, it will eventually be closed 
to the public and replaced by a system that doesn't let everybody 
modify everything, but if people can play nice for now and manage to 
add their plugins so I can do more extensive testing, it'd be much 
appreciated.
http://unknowngenius.com/wp-plugins/admin/
log: temp
pass: guineapig

You'll also be able to look at the fields stored for each plugin, 
suggestions for improvement are most welcome.

Notes for Plugin Developers
If you want to try and make your plugin work with the plugin mgr, you 
need:
- to create an account in the admin tool (see above), ignore the 
password stuff for now...
- add a plugin record under your account
- fill whichever fields are relevant, most should be quite obvious...
- "Plugin Short Name" should be the actual filename of your plugin 
minus "php", i.e., if your plugin is "my-wp-plugin.php", input 
"my-wp-plugin". This will also be the name of the folder inside 
wp-content where all your files will be copied (except the plugin that 
will go in 'plugins' of course), in case of "one-click" install...
- If you want to make your plugin "one-click-installable", just place 
the plugin file and any other files you might need in a folder named 
with the value you entered in the field above (e.g. "my-wp-plugin"), 
zip it, upload it to your own server and place the URL in the 
"one-click url" field.

- You can add categories and subcategories to sort your plugin under, 
if you want, I'll try to make a nice sorting system later on...
BTW, to get a full list of authors/plugins in the admin tools for now, 
just select "is not empty" on about any field and that'll do the trick. 
Will fix that later...

Every comments/suggestions most welcome *except* if they are to tell me 
how one-click installs are a security issues and why you do not want 
your wp-content/plugins folders to be writable: I appreciate that, and 
will never force you to change, but I think it would also be incredibly 
helpful to the average users to be able to do these installs without 
spending half an hour each time...

Cheers,
-- 
Dave / デイヴ
drdave at unknowngenius.com