One of the main reason why WordPress is so popular is the amount of available Plugins. Most users using Plugins via the most popular way – in the folder plugins
under wp-content
, and activate them in the backend of WordPress. For other possibilities of plugin integration WordPress 3.0 try to provide a more user friendly way.
WordPress offers many possibilities to hook into the system, sometime they are better and faster.
For this reason the admin can find a new tab on the Plugin page “Drop-ins”, see screenshot below of the current beta 1.
In comparison a screenshot of WordPress 2.9.
There is also a tab for must-use plugins. Plugins can be stored in a “WordPress MU”-plugins folder.
Comments
10 responses to “Better Plugin List in WordPress 3.0”
Nice, I hadn’t noticed the Drop-ins page. Also worth noting is that there’s also a “must-use” page if you’ve activated Multisite and have plugins in the mu-plugins directory.
I don’t see this on my installation of 3.0 beta 1. Is this for multi-site installs only?
Heh, I was just going to leave a comment about the mu-plugins folder list, because the screenshot didn’t show in the feed.
@Dalton: you can find also this, when you have a plugin in wp-content or other folder, maybe languages.
@Andrea_r: this was add later 😉 – sorry
@Andrea_r: We did a little update after the post was published 😉
I’m real proud of these. Thanks for the write-up!
You’ll only see the Drop-ins and Must-Use menus if you have any. Also, mu-plugins have worked in a regular WP install since 2.8, so no need to actually enable multisite to use them.
hmm, nice, how to use drop-ins? it is first time i see it. I can overwrite every class or function?
You can use drop-ins plugins before 3.0. But the plugins was not listed in backend. WP als for files in wp-content, db.php is one of example. Other site you can use a plugin in folder languages – this was used, when set a language in wp-config.php. Often is this ways faster and better for performance. I dont no sites for more information, i read the source of WP.
I’m sorry Frank, but I don’t really get the concept behind drop-ins either. Unfortunately in this post you just say “There’ll be a drop-ins page” without really explaning what drop-ins are.
So what are drop-ins? 🙂
Greets
@Konstantin: Drop Ins is stuff like a database class replacement file. You place it in defined locations (those differ per drop-in component, basically those are locations if a file exists there) and then you have a drop-in. For example your own database class implementation.