[wp-hackers] Auto Update Plugins

[Stephen Rider]

From: scribu <scribu at gmail.com>

> I have a plugin that generates a skinable carousel. The user's CSS  
> file
> could be stored in wp-content/plugins-data/my-plugin/ but it would  
> actualy
> make more sense in the current theme directory, since the idea would  
> be to
> make it blend with the rest of the site.

My aforementioned JavaScript Pull-Quotes has a solution to that one.   
You can set a Style in Settings, but if a theme has a file in it  
called jspullquotes.css, that (optionally) overrides what is selected  
in Settings.  You could certainly do the same with your plugin.

On Feb 17, 2009, at 5:15 PM, Otto wrote:

[RE Spam Karma sub-plugins]
> Instead, those sub-plugins (as it were) should be fully fledged
> WordPress plugins that utilize actions/filters in the main plugin. A
> plugin can easily create its own actions (merely by doing
> do_action('plugin-action-name'); ), so it should do so and then let
> other WP plugins fill in the bits that way.

Two reasons why this is a bad idea:

1) In the case of Spam Karma, you're talking 10 extra plugins, just by  
default.  Just how long and cluttered do you want your Manage Plugins  
page to be?

2) Spam Karma can run on many CMS/blog platforms, and as such cannot  
strongly tie itself into WordPress specific hooks and such.  Thus its  
own system for loading sub-plugins.

3) In the case of the Pull-Quotes plugin (or scribu's plugin), I think  
it would be kind of crazy to have (again) an entirely separate plugin  
for every Style that it can use.  Basically we're talking a plugin  
just to load a style-sheet into a menu in another plugin's Settings  
screen.  That system might work for some uses, but for many uses it  
just gets silly.


I'm not entirely sure what all the fuss is about.  This is *zero* code  
into WP core.  All I'm asking is that we decide on a standard location  
for such things, so that IF a plugin author wants to locate files  
externally, there is a standard to go by.

Stephen