One of the testing environments I use for development and tutorials is based on a DirectAdmin hosting account, and the installer for this is Sofaculous.
My issue with Sofaculous is simply that its bundle or sets feature is extremely limited. It is limited to only those on the WordPress.org repo, so I can’t link it to my custom repo.
Now, I’ve done a good job of creating a plugin to install and modify WordPress to work how I want it to my Ninja Updater plugin allows me to install bundles, apply snippets and install directly from my custom rep,o but I need to manually find a local copy and upload this when working on this and other poor bundle providers.
This set option would be handy if it weren’t just limited to WordPress.org repo plugins. I could pre-select a set and have it install ninja-updater
I can’t upload ninja-updater to the repo it exposes my private repo, and it’s only really useful if it has all these features releasing it otherwise would serve no purpose to anyone as it wouldn’t do anything, and I’d still need to find a way to get it to download what I need for it to be helpful following a request I did recently release a video on what Ninja Updater is and does you can view that below this paragraph
So, for a while, I’ve done nothing then this morning, while setting up another set of test sites, I worked something out for the first time, what about if I was to create a plugin that would easily download and activate a remote plugin by just sticking the URL in the interface and with this easy installer was born
I have tested and released a few versions of this today and finalised version 1.2, which can be viewed here: https://github.com/stingray82/easy-installer. The next step for me was now to try and get this on the repo, and then I have a successful workflow.
So firstly, I’ve submitted it to the repo today and hope to have an answer in the next week or two. Its simple and doesn’t do a lot, but hopefully, it will get approved.
So, my planned workflow is as follows:
- Automatically install easy-installer from the repo if approved
- Setup Licence Buddy to automatically paste the repo URL for ninja-updater in the plugin URL box so it does it with a simple click
- Install Plugin & Activate
- delete easy-installer
This means no more looking for a local copy of ninja-installer and will make working with my DirectAdmin development environment so much more efficient.
I will also be doing a tutorial on using Licence Buddy as well and will place a link to that below when it’s complete.
Update: The first submission of easy-installer has been rejected not because of any issue with the plugin but because of security concerns about users using the plugin and what it can do. I have replied and offered some concessions and suggestions and have pushed an updated version, which has warnings and a checkbox to check before you can run the installer. Hopefully, this will appease the security concerns.
Update Number 2: I have heard back, and it is clear to me this will not be accepted at all, so I will leave it on GitHub for you to find and use if you need to, but I have another solution using browser extensions I already have installed, I just need to finalise some testing and will hope to release an article and a tutorial in due course so officially this project will not be making it to the wordpress.org repo;
