[wp-hackers] Auto Update Plugins

[Otto]

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 10:33 PM, Duane Storey <duanestorey at gmail.com> wrote:
> The current WordPress implementation of the auto plugin updater does the
> following:
>
> 1) Downloads a zip file of the new plugin
> 2) Unzips it into a new directory
> 3) Deletes the old directoy
> 4) Copies the new directory to the old directory
> 5) Deletes the new directory
>
> A side effect of this is that all user-generated content that's part of the
> plugin gets deleted (for example, you can add custom styles to CFORMS, or
> custom icons to WPtouch).  Anyone know the motivation behind doing it this
> way?  The auto upgrade for WordPress obviously works differently since your
> themes and plugins aren't deleted during an auto upgrade.   I'd be happy to
> submit a patch to simply unzip into the current plugin directory (which
> would maintain user generated content in that plugin folder), but I was just
> curious about the motivation for doing it the current way.

It would be better to simply make your plugin store the user generated
content somewhere safe. Like in a custom subdirectory of the uploads
directory.