WordPress 3 – challanges for plugin authors
The Setup
As I posted earlier, I started to experiment with the new WordPress 3. MultiSite version. Everything went smoothly… until I tried to play with the plugin activation in the multisite setup.
If you have WP 3 or later installed you could notice there is an improved plugin listing in the admin panel:
Besides the earlier All – Active/Inactive tabs now we have some new ones: Network, Must Use and Drop-ins.
The Network is relatively simple: if you activated any of your plugins “network-wide”, i.e. to be available on all your sites created with your central (a.k.a. main) WordPress install — they will be listed under this tab.
Next is the Must Use: these plugins are placed in a new folder wp-content/mu-plugins. There is a lot of misinformation regarding this folder, its name and its function.
Even in the Codex there is a line saying:
Global WordPress Plugins: Site-wide WordPress Plugins to be used by all blogs on the entire network are installed in the mu-plugins directory.
Actually, that’s not true. Since the merger of the “regular” WP and WPMU many people think the abbreviation “mu” always stands for ‘multi-user’ as it was the case for WPMU. However, in this case the mu-plugins folder is for the “Must Use” plugins! A fine example for the placement of a plugin in this directory is the Domain Mapping plugin – when you want to use this feature of WP 3. Plugins in that directory are executed automatically.
The next problem with the quote from the WP online manual is assuming that uploading any plugin to this folder would make it available on the entire network. (Network here means all your sites created on the subfolders or subdomins in your WP 3.x.x. installation!) The statement is not true because most of the plugins placed in that folder will never show up in your admin panel!
The mentioning of the network takes us back to the Network label. To have a plugin active for your network you don’t have to place it in a special location. Just upload it the usual way to the wp-content/plugins folder and on the Plugins subpanel in your WP admin your will see this:
Quite clearly you have the options to make it active only for the main site (where your WP install is) or for the whole “network” of your sites/blogs created from here.
A few words about the Drop-ins. This possibility was also there in a couple of earlier version (since 2.8, maybe) but is not widely used. You can drop a .php file in the wp-content directory and it will appear in the list with the following information:
Drop-ins are advanced plugins in the /wp-content directory that replace WordPress functionality when present.
The Challenge
The majority of the plugins written for what used to be the “regular” WordPress are not prepared to handle the options outlined above. I have tested a few, uploading them into the wp-content/mu-plugins but they never showed up anywhere in the admin panel. Obviously, they are missing something in their code…
Next, there is a problem with the plugins that require some kind of settings, having their own options subpanel. For those interested in the MultiSite feature of this WordPress version the biggest advantage would be to upload the plugin, activate network-wide, set its options on the main site… and have the same options/settings already in place when creating new sites/blogs.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. I can understand what the developers had in mind when introducing this feature: a truly multi-site approach, meaning you have one single install and you can create multiple sites from there – all with their own specific setup: plugins, themes etc.
On the other hand, the needs of niche marketers when quickly creating different blog sites for niches or micro-niches, are completely different. Especially, when it comes to SEO related plugins and settings they would want to be able to “export” the initial settings on the main, central site to the newly created blog sites.
I have tried in all the possible ways this: first network-activating the plugin and then creating new sites. Then creating new sites and installing and network-activating the plugin. It never had the same settings “pre-set” as on the main site.
So, here is where I see the winner plugins in the future:
- Make the default settings at activation pre-set for an ideal usage: no need to do it for all the sites
- Make it aware of the new
mu-pluginspossibility and have the same settings available for all the sites simply by activation - Make drop-in plugins to replace core WP functions
Can you think of any other useful features in future plugins? Tell me about them in your comments!
2 Responses to “WordPress 3 – challanges for plugin authors”
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ijohnson on August 21st, 2010
Istvan,
This is a very interesting and informative post! I’m going to have to go back over it a couple of times for further clarification of the points you made and to test things out on my end.
Istvan Horvath on August 21st, 2010
I will talk even more about these issues in my upcoming WP3 videos