[wp-hackers] Backup Plug-in and WordPress Plug-In System - Was Re:" "

[Jonathan Firestone]

Scott,

Thank you so much for your support. No, I wouldn't presume that Clark
is representative of the group. I've seen a lot of great things from
the posts here and I felt it was time to de-lurk given the mention of
the backup system and it's role in the system itself versus being a
plug-in/modification.
More below...

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 17:32:24 -0500, Scott Merrill <skippy at skippy.net> wrote:
> To Jonathon:
> I hope you know that David Clark is _not_ representative of the larger
> WordPress community.  I, for one, welcome discussion and conversation,
> even if I don't agree with what's being said.  Please don't let David's
> inflammatory response discourage you from participating.
> 
> Any content you place in the wp-content/ directory will _not_ be
> over-written by WordPress upgrades (save for plugins distributed with WP
> itself, which are few).  All plugins you download and install yourself
> will be untouched when you upgrade to a new version of WordPress.

Okay, I can understand where you're coming from - but for every
plug-in I add, I can probably expect (if it's anything like what's
expected for installing the backup tool) at least one if not two or
three php files to be added somewhere in support of the product.
Eventually that will add clutter, introduce breakage points and in
some cases will replace or alter existing code. I've seen examples of
this in the past releases, and even now in this one.

 If you're like me or even a novice user, you won't be interested in
upgrading every single release. You might be one, two or three primary
releases down the road before you've even got time for an upgrade let
alone add features via other plug-ins.

A system that stays clean to the point where two distinct processes
happen: Upgrades and Plug-in Activations.  For upgrades,  all that has
to be done is a complete replacement of primary scripts in a separate
part of the directory tree. For Plug-Ins, I drop in the folder
containing the plug-in, and when I go to a single page listing all
detectable plug-ins, I'd click "Activate/Install" on the plug-in. I
realize that in some respects this is possible - and perhaps the fact
this feature doesn't exist with all plug-ins means the developers
aren't trying to set up install scripts or keep the plug-in overrides
completely separate within the directory tree... Regardless I believe
that should be the overall goal. I could be wrong, but simple, easy?
Right now alot of these installs aren't.