WordPress Extension Manager

I’ve checked out various plugins for WordPress that might help me to administer my installed plugins and themes. I looked at:

One Click
Single Click Plugin Updater
Update Manager
WordPress InstantUpgrade plugin
and some more websites with promising ideas…

I wanted a plugin that could do the following things:

install, update and delete plugins and themes
it should be able to handle various locations, i.e. at least these plugin repositories and maybe some from somewhere else.
basic search functionality for all these plugins and themes

Since I haven’t found something that could do all these things, I wrote the WordPress Extension Manager: a plugin that lets you do all of the above.

You can download the plugin here.

Installation

Unzip the downloaded plugin into your wp-content/plugins directory and activate it on the plugins screen. After that perform the following steps:

change the permissions of the wp-content/plugins directory to 0777. Alternatively you can change the owner of this directory to the same user who is running the webserver.
do the same thing you did in step 1 with these directories:
- wp-content/themes
- extension-manager/plugins
- extension-manager/themes

Once you’ve done that you can go to Options - Extension Manager and start using the plugin.

Usage

You’re a geek? Read how this plugin works.

If you go to Options - Extension Manager you’ll be presented with these options:

Install Plugins
Install Themes
Maintenance

These actions will be described in the following sections.

Install plugins and themes

If you’d like to install a plugin or a theme simply hit the corresponding button and you’ll be presented with a list of all plugins or themes. You can use the Plugins per page dropdown list to show more plugins at once; the Next and Previous buttons help you to navigate one page forward or back.

If you’re searching for a plugin enter some search terms and press enter or click the Filter button. The results are plugins or themes that contain one of the words you entered in their name, version, download link or author link. In the future it will be possible to search the tags and maybe the description too.

Maintenance

This page shows all your installed plugins and themes. You can delete installed plugins or themes and if you’ve downloaded them with this plugin you can remove the corresponding downloads too.

If you want to delete a installed plugin or theme please make sure that you’ve deactivated it. In case you don’t care about some clutter in your database just delete the plugin or theme.

Notes

I’ve tested this plugin with WordPress 2.3.x but it should be possible to use it with earlier versions; just give it a try. I’ve only tested this plugin with PHP 5.2.x and if you’re using an earlier version of PHP some things might not work - please let me know and I’ll try to fix it. Alas, this plugin doesn’t work with PHP 4 and probably never will.

Tags: install, maintenance, plugin, theme, WordPress
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27 Responses to “WordPress Extension Manager”

planner says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:19 pm

Sounds like a very good plugin, but there are one or two problems:

extension-manager/plugins and extension-manager/themes do not exist. Are we expected to create them?
I could not activate the plugin. Gave the following error message:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘{’ in /wp-content/plugins/extension-manager/extension-manager.php on line 49

Christian Schenk says:
January 19th, 2008 at 11:57 am

Hi planner,

thanks for your feedback. To answer your questions:

you’ll have to create the two directories. I’ve updated the installation instructions here.
Are you running PHP4? It’s possible that this plugin might not work with older versions of PHP, because I’ve only tested it with PHP5. I’m looking forward to fix that soon.

I’ve created an new version (0.6.3) that displays an error message if you’re running PHP4. Sorry about that.

Cheers,
Christian

Simon says:
January 25th, 2008 at 5:28 pm

I get the error:

Fatal error: Class ‘ZipArchive’ not found in /usr/local/[hidden for security]/wp-content/plugins/extension-manager/FileHelper.php on line 171

Christian Schenk says:
January 26th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

Hi Simon,

You’re using PHP4? I haven’t had the time to test this plugin thoroughly with PHP4. Please be patient until I’ve fixed that or upgrade to a current version of PHP ;-).

It’s also possible that your version of PHP wasn’t compiled with support for Zip files. If that’s the case you won’t see zip or zlib entries in the output of phpinfo. You can have a look at how to fix this here.

Cheers,
Christian

David says:
January 27th, 2008 at 5:40 am

Same error as Planner, I am running php v5.

Parse error extension-manager.php on line 49

Any suggestions and or solutions yet?

Christian Schenk says:
January 27th, 2008 at 5:40 pm

Hi David,
that particular line contains a try statement that was first introduced in PHP5. Since Planner is running PHP4 this plugin will not work for him. I’m sorry about that.
But currently I haven’t got the time to fix compatibility issues with older versions of PHP so you’ll need at least PHP 5.2 or newer. It might work with version 5.0 but I haven’t tested that.
I’ll write you an e-mail soon and post the results here…
Cheers,
Christian

Dave Luther says:
January 29th, 2008 at 5:14 am

How do I create directories in /plugins/extension-manager.php
My cp does not have a provision for creatind a directory in a php file. If I could, where would it be created?

Christian Schenk says:
January 29th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

Hi Dave,
if you extract the plugin all files should be inside a directory named extension-manager. This directory goes into the wp-content/plugins directory of your WordPress installation.

Inside the directory wp-content/plugins/extension-manager you’ll have to create two directories: plugins and themes. Currently, you’ll have to do this, but this will be fixed in the future.

Did I miss a typo somewhere on this page or here? Or how comes that you wanted to create a directory inside a file?

Cheers,
Christian

Fizzgigg says:
February 16th, 2008 at 3:13 pm

When I activate the plugin and goes to Settings/Extension Manager and click on either Install plugins or Maintenance I get the message “Correct these errors first: Change the setting of ‘allow_url_fopen’ to ‘On’”.
For starters, where? Any clues?

Christian Schenk says:
February 16th, 2008 at 5:15 pm

Hi Fizzgigg,
You can find this option in the php.ini file. Have a look at this entry: it says that the default value is On - maybe somebody has changed that on your server.
BTW: I’m not sure whether I might fix this with ini_set(); I will have a look at this any time soon.

Fizzgigg says:
February 16th, 2008 at 9:36 pm

And since I’m using a webhotell I guess I don’t have access to that file, and because of that my goose is cooked?

Wen says:
March 14th, 2008 at 9:44 pm

Hello Fizzgigg,

I’ve came across that statement several times, and when talking with my hostmaster they told me that due to security reasons they didnt allow the “allow_url_fopen”. Maybe it’s the same at your webhotel/hostmaster?

Lara says:
March 17th, 2008 at 3:25 pm

Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.

Parse error: parse error, unexpected ‘{’ in /home/content/l/a/d/ladydelaluna/html/wp-content/plugins/extension-manager/extension-manager.php on line 68

Any ideas on this one?

Brian says:
April 8th, 2008 at 5:16 pm

Lara -

I got the same thing. I think it is a PHP 4.x error. My host has PHP 4 and 5 but uses 4 by default. I fixed that with the following line in my .htaccess in the plugin’s folder:

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

After that, the plugin worked fine.

Christian Schenk says:
April 8th, 2008 at 5:50 pm

Thanks for the hint Brian!

John Moriarty says:
April 9th, 2008 at 2:16 pm

Brian - I only have PHP 4.4.7 on my hosts. Will the plugin not work at all? Know of any workarounds? (I get the same fatal error on line 68 that Christian Schenk is getting)

John Moriarty says:
April 9th, 2008 at 2:24 pm

Ah okay have just seen that it doesn’t work with PHP 4 and probably never will. Will get back to the hosters and tell them to get on with upgrading (to a PHP that was first released almost 4 years ago!)

thanks anyway!

Christian Schenk says:
April 9th, 2008 at 8:12 pm

Hi John,

Ah okay have just seen that it doesn’t work with PHP 4 and probably never will.

From a developer’s point of view it’s a lot easier to use PHP 5 than its predecessor. Since I haven’t got that much time to provide a version that would work with PHP 4 too it’s “PHP 5 only”.

Will get back to the hosters and tell them to get on with upgrading (to a PHP that was first released almost 4 years ago!)

The part in parentheses makes me believe that you understand my “PHP 5 only” policy. Thanks.

eno says:
May 13th, 2008 at 7:41 am

Hey Christian, thanks for creating/distributing the plugin. I got it installed no problem and activated, but when I go to the Settings->Extension Manager page/tab, I receive this rather silly error message:

“You’re running PHP 5.2.0. Please update to at least PHP 5.2 or be patient until this plugin works with PHP 4.”

… uh… what’s wrong with this picture? Any ideas?

Lionel Chollet says:
May 13th, 2008 at 7:27 pm

Bug report
WordPress 2.5.1 - Extension Manager 0.6.6.
Error whien activating:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘{’ in wordpress/wp-content/plugins/extension-manager/extension-manager.php on line 68

Christian Schenk says:
May 14th, 2008 at 6:15 am

Hello Lionel,
PHP version? 4? Since I haven’t got the time to support PHP 4 you’ll have to upgrade to PHP 5.

frlevel says:
May 26th, 2008 at 3:20 pm

Hi,

When I select “Install Plugins” or “Install Themes”, I have the following error:

Correct these errors first:
 
Can't open file 'http://data.christianschenk.org/wordpress-extensions-manager/data/plugins-update.txt'

php version : 5.2.4

Thanks for your help !

Neil Stead says:
May 29th, 2008 at 12:03 pm

Has anyone tested this with Wordpress 2.5?

Christian Schenk says:
May 29th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

It looks ugly but works.

Kolja Schleich says:
June 17th, 2008 at 8:20 am

Hi,

I think your plugin has the potential to become the standard for plugins und theme management. But until this is the case it still needs some improvements.

Most importantly you should (if this is possible) retrieve plugin and theme information directly from the repositories and not via an xml file! I’m using version 0.6.6 and got an xml file from 01/17/2008. This is half a year old!! Many plugins are not listed in the file and it is likely that all or are at least most of the plugins are out of date. This makes your extension manager simply useless.
The other way would to update the xml file automatically every hour or so, but as far as I can tell it takes quite a wile for generation (I’m currently running your crawl.sh script for approx. 15 minutes and it’s still working). So this would not be very convenient.

So if you get the plugin information directly from the repository the list would be always up-to-date.

The second thing to do would be a styling upgrade to look nice in Wordpress 2.5. As you’ve already stated: It looks ugly.

I also get the following error when I hit the manage button (Plugin Version: 0.6.6, PHP 5.2.0)

Warning: array_filter() [function.array-filter]: An error occurred while invoking the filter callback in /var/www/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/extension-manager/FileHelper.php on line 143

Thanks for your work.

Andly says:
July 1st, 2008 at 7:58 pm

Hi Chris
tested on php 5.2 and wordpress 2.5, it works fine but looks a little…ugly!!

Thanks anyway for the awesome job

Andly

WordPress Plugins Database » Plugin Details » Extension Manager says:
August 7th, 2008 at 12:49 pm

[...] Visit [...]

planner says:
January 18th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Sounds like a very good plugin, but there are one or two problems:

extension-manager/plugins and extension-manager/themes do not exist. Are we expected to create them?
I could not activate the plugin. Gave the following error message:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘{’ in /wp-content/plugins/extension-manager/extension-manager.php on line 49
Christian Schenk says:
January 19th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Hi planner,

thanks for your feedback. To answer your questions:
1. you’ll have to create the two directories. I’ve updated the installation instructions here.
2. Are you running PHP4? It’s possible that this plugin might not work with older versions of PHP, because I’ve only tested it with PHP5. I’m looking forward to fix that soon.
I’ve created an new version (0.6.3) that displays an error message if you’re running PHP4. Sorry about that.

Cheers,
Christian
Simon says:
January 25th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I get the error:

Fatal error: Class ‘ZipArchive’ not found in /usr/local/[hidden for security]/wp-content/plugins/extension-manager/FileHelper.php on line 171
Christian Schenk says:
January 26th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Hi Simon,

You’re using PHP4? I haven’t had the time to test this plugin thoroughly with PHP4. Please be patient until I’ve fixed that or upgrade to a current version of PHP ;-).

It’s also possible that your version of PHP wasn’t compiled with support for Zip files. If that’s the case you won’t see zip or zlib entries in the output of phpinfo. You can have a look at how to fix this here.

Cheers,
Christian
David says:
January 27th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Same error as Planner, I am running php v5.

Parse error extension-manager.php on line 49

Any suggestions and or solutions yet?
Christian Schenk says:
January 27th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Hi David,
that particular line contains a try statement that was first introduced in PHP5. Since Planner is running PHP4 this plugin will not work for him. I’m sorry about that.
But currently I haven’t got the time to fix compatibility issues with older versions of PHP so you’ll need at least PHP 5.2 or newer. It might work with version 5.0 but I haven’t tested that.
I’ll write you an e-mail soon and post the results here…
Cheers,
Christian
Dave Luther says:
January 29th, 2008 at 5:14 am
How do I create directories in /plugins/extension-manager.php
My cp does not have a provision for creatind a directory in a php file. If I could, where would it be created?
Christian Schenk says:
January 29th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Hi Dave,
if you extract the plugin all files should be inside a directory named extension-manager. This directory goes into the wp-content/plugins directory of your WordPress installation.

Inside the directory wp-content/plugins/extension-manager you’ll have to create two directories: plugins and themes. Currently, you’ll have to do this, but this will be fixed in the future.

Did I miss a typo somewhere on this page or here? Or how comes that you wanted to create a directory inside a file?

Cheers,
Christian
Fizzgigg says:
February 16th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
When I activate the plugin and goes to Settings/Extension Manager and click on either Install plugins or Maintenance I get the message “Correct these errors first: Change the setting of ‘allow_url_fopen’ to ‘On’”.
For starters, where? Any clues?
Christian Schenk says:
February 16th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Hi Fizzgigg,
You can find this option in the php.ini file. Have a look at this entry: it says that the default value is On - maybe somebody has changed that on your server.
BTW: I’m not sure whether I might fix this with ini_set(); I will have a look at this any time soon.
Fizzgigg says:
February 16th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
And since I’m using a webhotell I guess I don’t have access to that file, and because of that my goose is cooked?
Wen says:
March 14th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Hello Fizzgigg,

I’ve came across that statement several times, and when talking with my hostmaster they told me that due to security reasons they didnt allow the “allow_url_fopen”. Maybe it’s the same at your webhotel/hostmaster?
Lara says:
March 17th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.

Parse error: parse error, unexpected ‘{’ in /home/content/l/a/d/ladydelaluna/html/wp-content/plugins/extension-manager/extension-manager.php on line 68

Any ideas on this one?
Brian says:
April 8th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Lara -

I got the same thing. I think it is a PHP 4.x error. My host has PHP 4 and 5 but uses 4 by default. I fixed that with the following line in my .htaccess in the plugin’s folder:

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

After that, the plugin worked fine.
Christian Schenk says:
April 8th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Thanks for the hint Brian!
John Moriarty says:
April 9th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Brian - I only have PHP 4.4.7 on my hosts. Will the plugin not work at all? Know of any workarounds? (I get the same fatal error on line 68 that Christian Schenk is getting)
John Moriarty says:
April 9th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Ah okay have just seen that it doesn’t work with PHP 4 and probably never will. Will get back to the hosters and tell them to get on with upgrading (to a PHP that was first released almost 4 years ago!)

thanks anyway!
Christian Schenk says:
April 9th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Hi John,

Ah okay have just seen that it doesn’t work with PHP 4 and probably never will.

From a developer’s point of view it’s a lot easier to use PHP 5 than its predecessor. Since I haven’t got that much time to provide a version that would work with PHP 4 too it’s “PHP 5 only”.

Will get back to the hosters and tell them to get on with upgrading (to a PHP that was first released almost 4 years ago!)

The part in parentheses makes me believe that you understand my “PHP 5 only” policy. Thanks.
eno says:
May 13th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Hey Christian, thanks for creating/distributing the plugin. I got it installed no problem and activated, but when I go to the Settings->Extension Manager page/tab, I receive this rather silly error message:

“You’re running PHP 5.2.0. Please update to at least PHP 5.2 or be patient until this plugin works with PHP 4.”

… uh… what’s wrong with this picture? Any ideas?
Lionel Chollet says:
May 13th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Bug report
WordPress 2.5.1 - Extension Manager 0.6.6.
Error whien activating:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘{’ in wordpress/wp-content/plugins/extension-manager/extension-manager.php on line 68
Christian Schenk says:
May 14th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Hello Lionel,
PHP version? 4? Since I haven’t got the time to support PHP 4 you’ll have to upgrade to PHP 5.
frlevel says:
May 26th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Hi,

When I select “Install Plugins” or “Install Themes”, I have the following error:
```
Correct these errors first:
 
Can't open file 'http://data.christianschenk.org/wordpress-extensions-manager/data/plugins-update.txt'
```
php version : 5.2.4

Thanks for your help !
Neil Stead says:
May 29th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Has anyone tested this with Wordpress 2.5?
Christian Schenk says:
May 29th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
It looks ugly but works.
Kolja Schleich says:
June 17th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Hi,

I think your plugin has the potential to become the standard for plugins und theme management. But until this is the case it still needs some improvements.

Most importantly you should (if this is possible) retrieve plugin and theme information directly from the repositories and not via an xml file! I’m using version 0.6.6 and got an xml file from 01/17/2008. This is half a year old!! Many plugins are not listed in the file and it is likely that all or are at least most of the plugins are out of date. This makes your extension manager simply useless.
The other way would to update the xml file automatically every hour or so, but as far as I can tell it takes quite a wile for generation (I’m currently running your crawl.sh script for approx. 15 minutes and it’s still working). So this would not be very convenient.

So if you get the plugin information directly from the repository the list would be always up-to-date.

The second thing to do would be a styling upgrade to look nice in Wordpress 2.5. As you’ve already stated: It looks ugly.

I also get the following error when I hit the manage button (Plugin Version: 0.6.6, PHP 5.2.0)

Warning: array_filter() [function.array-filter]: An error occurred while invoking the filter callback in /var/www/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/extension-manager/FileHelper.php on line 143

Thanks for your work.
Andly says:
July 1st, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Hi Chris
tested on php 5.2 and wordpress 2.5, it works fine but looks a little…ugly!!

Thanks anyway for the awesome job

Andly
WordPress Plugins Database » Plugin Details » Extension Manager says:
August 7th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
[...] Visit [...]

WordPress Extension Manager

Installation

Usage

Install plugins and themes

Maintenance

Notes

27 Responses to “WordPress Extension Manager”

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