{"id":357,"date":"2007-01-26T11:12:32","date_gmt":"2007-01-26T11:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/2007\/the-ultimate-plugin-administration-interface\/"},"modified":"2007-01-26T15:07:48","modified_gmt":"2007-01-26T15:07:48","slug":"the-ultimate-plugin-administration-interface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/the-ultimate-plugin-administration-interface\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate Plugin Administration Interface"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s assume you have a decent web platform. It may be a CMS, a forum,&nbsp;a blog, a gallery, or a wiki &#8211; the point is, it works. And this platform has plugin functionality. Let&#8217;s go ahead and also assume that the process of writing a plugin and extending\/modifying the functionality of existing code is made very easy by means of well thought-out hooks and filters. All what&#8217;s left is the process of installing, updating, and managing plugins on your platform. If there would be an &#8220;ultimate&#8221; plugin administration interface, what would it be?\n<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>Core Features<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ability to remotely upload a plugin (as&nbsp;zip&nbsp;file??)&nbsp;through the interface without having to FTP or SSH into the server. <\/li>\n<li>An &#8220;update detection&#8221; mechanism that can be manually or automatically run to check for updates for a plugin or more than one plugins and report back. <\/li>\n<li>Automatic-detection of &#8220;corrupt&#8221; or broken plugins &#8211; so you don&#8217;t have to FTP into the server to delete a bad plugin. <\/li>\n<li>Remote plugin management: delete plugins from the web. <\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Debug&#8221; Mode: All plugins are disabled. The key here is, once Debug Mode is turned off, your plugins go back to the way they were &#8211; some enabled, some disabled, just like you left them. <\/li>\n<li>Automated hooks for installing, uninstalling, and upgrading from previous versions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Key Ideas<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Security. Don&#8217;t allow automatic updating of plugins because you have no idea what changes have been made to their source. <\/li>\n<li>Ease-of-Use. Never have to remotely connect to your server to install or remove a plugin. <\/li>\n<li>Stability. Bad plugins won&#8217;t fry your server (a la WordPress); you don&#8217;t have to frantically SSH in, and cd recursively into the directory just to rm the file. <\/li>\n<li>Compatibility. Define a specification that can be used by plugin authors to define for what versions of PHP, MySQL, and Habari their plugin(s) work and for which versions they don&#8217;t. Even allow for custom pre-requisites via a &#8220;compatibility check&#8221; function in the plugin. If a plugin specifically states it doesn&#8217;t work, don&#8217;t let it install. <\/li>\n<li>Bleeding Edge. By means of the update detection service, there is no reason for someone to be running an out-dated plugin. <\/li>\n<li>Automation. The first time a plugin is detected, it will call a install function in the plugin. If a&nbsp;newer version of a plugin that was previously installed is found, it&#8217;ll call an upgrade function in the plugin, and if a plugin is queued for uninstall, the uninstall function will be launched. These functions may have user interfaces, use other private and public methods, etc. but should be complete and self-sustaining: i.e. no secondary install steps will be needed. Configuration is different from installation. <\/li>\n<li>GUIDs. Each author, upon registering his or her plugin with the central plugin repository, get&#8217;s a unique GUID for one or more plugins. This GUID is unique to each plugin, and remains constant throughout all versions of the plugin unless it&#8217;s being shipped as a different product. This feature is used in the install\/remove\/upgrade automation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These ideas and features are just the beginning of what&#8217;s possible for a plugin administration interface written from the ground-up with power, control, and end-user simplicity in mind. They mean nothing without a proper UI, and some good code to back it all up. But it&#8217;s a start.\n<\/p>\n<p>These are not just &#8220;pie-in-the-sky&#8221; suggestions and day-dreams, this is all brain-storming for a very real and very tangible project. What do <em>you<\/em> think would make the ultimate plugin administration interface? What ideas are we missing here? What would you like to see in such an interface?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s assume you have a decent web platform. It may be a CMS, a forum,&nbsp;a blog, a gallery, or a wiki &#8211; the point is, it works. And this platform has plugin functionality. Let&#8217;s go ahead and also assume that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/the-ultimate-plugin-administration-interface\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[228,229,227,230],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software","tag-administration","tag-interface","tag-plugins","tag-ui"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t<!-- All in One SEO 5.0.4 - aioseo.com -->\n\t<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Let&#039;s assume you have a decent web platform. 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