Input WordPress Toolkit

[pleskpanel]

Server operating system version

All

Plesk version and microupdate number

All

While not a feature currently present, it would be handy to be able to replace a manually added plugin via the Toolkit GUI instead of having to upload it as a brand new one and then have to manually add sites to it.

 

[trialotto]

While not a feature currently present, it would be handy to be able to replace a manually added plugin via the Toolkit GUI instead of having to upload it as a brand new one and then have to manually add sites to it.

I fully agree.

@Sebahat.hadzhi and @custer, can you have a look at this inconvenience that currently is present in WPT?

Kind regards....

 

[Sebahat.hadzhi]

Hey, guys. Thank you for your input. While there is no dedicated built-in feature to copy plugins, I believe there's a relatively simple workaround. If you add the manually uploaded plugin to a set, you should be able to easily install the plugin(s) for additional websites. @pleskpanel can you please give it a go and let me know if that works sufficiently enough for the purpose? Thanks in advance.

 

[pleskpanel]

Hey, guys. Thank you for your input. While there is no dedicated built-in feature to copy plugins, I believe there's a relatively simple workaround. If you add the manually uploaded plugin to a set, you should be able to easily install the plugin(s) for additional websites. @pleskpanel can you please give it a go and let me know if that works sufficiently enough for the purpose? Thanks in advance.

Just to clarify, this is not about copying plugins but rather replacing a plugin that is already installed. For example, if you had a custom plugin that you wanted to update en mass or if you wanted to deploy a hotfix for an existing plugin that isn't yet available from a repository.

 

[Sebahat.hadzhi]

Apologies for the misunderstanding and thank you for the clarification. I brought that to the attention of our team and they agree it should be improved. However, at this point, I cannot provide an ETA on when that will happen. I will follow-up with confirmation when there are more details.

 

[trialotto]

@Sebahat.hadzhi

This

Just to clarify, this is not about copying plugins but rather replacing a plugin that is already installed. For example, if you had a custom plugin that you wanted to update en mass or if you wanted to deploy a hotfix for an existing plugin that isn't yet available from a repository.

requires and/or has to satisfy (at least) three conditions :

1 - existing plugin or theme update managers, if installed as a WordPress plugin, should be "worked around" in the sense that they should not interfere,

2 - support for zip file upload and/or zip file extraction of plugins to the plugin directory that - mostly - has a static name,

3 - automated implementation / upgrade on all sites (or a selection thereof) that have the previous version installed of a plugin that has to be upgraded.


In essence, conditions 1 and 2 are met and present in WPT.

The odd thing is that condition 3 does not happen, even though it is as simple as syncing the extracted zip file from one site to all other sites that have the (old) plugin installed : the (old) directories with the plugin files can simply be overwritten (and WP or WPT will recognize the new plugin as an upgraded one).

It is quite odd, since all necessary data is already stored in WP and/or WPT databases, so the addition of the automated step of syncing should be easy.


As a final remark, if Plesk Team develops this kind of automation, please pay attention to

- existing plugin / theme update managers : they have the nasty habit of storing copies of the old plugin on each site, even though ONE copy is necessary,

- the fact that is recommended to create ONE WPT "repository" of plugins that is stored in a separate directory (not part of any WP instance), therefore allowing to extract zip files in that specific directory and to sync them to the sites where the plugin has to be updated - this is not only safe (certainly when performing a security scan after extraction and before syncing), but it will also increase performance and speed,

- the fact that using a repository will also - in most cases - prevent that old plugins are backed up on each individual site (when we only need one backup).


Even the most simple of bash scripts could suffice for the time being : both WP and WPT will recognize the (updated) plugins after a sync!


I hope the above helps.


Kind regards....