[theme-reviewers] theme-reviewers Digest, Vol 12, Issue 6

[Ryan Hellyer]

>
> Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 09:42:59 -0500
> From: Josh Stauffer <joshstauffer at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [theme-reviewers] Bundling Plugins
> To: theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
> Message-ID: <BANLkTimh4ifTLqW_iw3qG5ydUFvEXHRECw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Just as Chip described is how I am going about it in my theme development.
>
> Although, I am interested to find out more about the "automatic install and
> activate" that Ryan is referring to. Any tutorials on this?
>
> Josh
>

David Gwyer asked me about that a while ago:
http://www.wptavern.com/forum/themes-templates/2120-installing-plugins-during-theme-installation.html.
The solution I posted there isn't optimal and I think copying the plugin
directly from the plugin repository would make more sense to ensure only up
to date versions are included.
<http://www.wptavern.com/forum/themes-templates/2120-installing-plugins-during-theme-installation.html>

I think allowing themes to install their own plugins is important to allow.
Otherwise it creates a situation in which the theme authors are either
limited in the scope in which they can build themes, or are forced to jerry
rig plugins into the theme itself. Neither of which I assume anyone wants to
see.

Imagine a theme which requires custom post-types to perform the task it was
designed for. That theme would either be ineligible to be in the repository,
or would be forced to put plugin functionality into the theme, despite it
making far more sense for that custom post-type to be implemented as a
plugin. That isn't a common situation, but I wouldn't like to see rare
situations like that being blocked from the official theme repository.
Another solution would be to require the user to manually download a plugin
to use the theme, but then you have a situation where a theme on it's own
will not function without forcing the user to dork around installing a
plugin just to make it work.
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