[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #14569: Assign plugins on a per-site-basis

[WordPress Trac]

#14569: Assign plugins on a per-site-basis
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 Reporter:  ChantalC         |       Owner:
     Type:  feature request  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal           |   Milestone:  Future Release
Component:  Plugins          |     Version:
 Severity:  normal           |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  needs-patch      |     Focuses:  multisite
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Comment (by rufein):

 Replying to [comment:12 earnjam]:
 > This is something that has come up quite a bit for me, so I'd love to
 work on writing a patch for this. But before I get too far into it, I
 wanted to post a thought/question here.
 >
 > Right now, all plugins are available on all sites immediately upon
 installation, so I would assume we'd like to keep that behavior going
 forward for easy backwards compatibility and consistency. So should this
 be set up opposite of the way themes work? Themes are stored as an array
 of "allowedthemes" in {{{wp_sitemeta}}} and the individual
 {{{wp_options}}} table for each site. But if the desire is for plugins to
 be enabled by default, then should this be "disabledplugins" or something
 similar?
 >
 > Would that be to confusing for themes and plugins to act differently
 though? They act differently now, but that is primarily because plugins
 don't have the enable/disable option. Perhaps they should be aligned for
 consistency?



 ----

 You are right. The behaviour is different. I want to make an explanation
 about the different behaviour of themes and plugins:


 == Themes ==

 '''Network Enable''' => This option makes that a theme will be available
 in the themes admin page of every site. The admin of every site can active
 or deactivate the theme.


 == Plugins ==


 '''Network Activate''' =>  This option makes that a plugin will be active
 in all sites. The admin of a site has no privileges to activate or
 deactivate. In fact, the plugin won't be shown in the admin plugins list
 of a site.


 == Conclusion ==


 So, you can add themes to the server. But it won't be visible  until the
 network admin enable the theme to the network. On the other hand, a
 '''plugin always be visible'''. If the network admin activate the plugin,
 it will available in every site. The sites admin can´t deactivate the
 plugin, but they can configure and use it.

 The request feature of this thread is about '''visibility'''. Instad of
 `disabledplugins` meta option, i would call it `visibility_plugins`. This
 change is to avoid confusion. A plugin could be disable, but visible to
 give the chance to activate the plugin.


 == A possible approach ==


 I would build `visibility_plugins` in the following way:


 {{{
 array(
   "plugin_name" => array(),     // Always visible
   "akismet" => array(1, 2, 5),  // array of unique $blog_id sites that
 will be invisible
   "hello" => array(0),          // Plugin -hello- will be invisible in all
 sites.
 );
 }}}

 We have to take into account:

 * If a plugin is activated in network, the visibility of the whole module
 have to be unset.
 * If a plugin is active in some site, the $blog_id visibility have to be
 unset.

 And it could be neccesary build an admin configuration page with
 checkboxes in the network admin area to configure the visibility of
 plugins.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/14569#comment:15>
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