[wp-hackers] Constant problems with plugins and hooks

[Andy Beard]

I have constant problems with plugins that hook into all my pages.

Whilst some plugin authors have attempted to add some level of "selectivity"
to their plugins, so that the plugins only hook into certain types of posts,
or certain page slugs, it rarely works on all pages.

Thus you end up switching off all automatic hooks, and placing the function
calls manually in each template.

Is there a need for some kind of universal plugin or feature in the core
that can be used by all plugin authors to control exactly which pages or
posts a plugin is allowed to hook into?

The ultimate aim would be to have a system such that you can switch theme,
and not have to make 100s of modifications to your template for simple
plugins for bookmarking etc.

Maybe implement it just as a barrier. Have an interface of active plugins,
and currently template files, and allow or disallow the plugin to
automatically hook into a certain template.

I am not a programmer, I just uncover problems I need solutions for. If I
can't find solutions, I feed them through to my programmers.
Whilst I haven't looked into this in depth, I have a feeling this would
require some form of modification to the core. That is potentially ok for my
own sites, but not very suitable for widespread distribution.

It could alternatively be created as an include for future plugin authors to
use, but that would require widescale adoption by plugin authors and updates
to plugins that already exist, which I feel is a little drastic.

Maybe this is something that is already going to be included in some future
version of Widgets, such that maybe  you would have multiple "widget
templates" that control all code relating to every hook on every template,
independant of the templates themselves.

It is possible some of the commercial offerings offer some of this
functionality, and if I implemented it, in all honestly it would also have
to be a semi-commercial undertaking with some form of pro version for those
managing multiple commercial blogs that needed additional functionality.

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