And just as a note. In the experimental version I created a JSON based Plugin Directory that works. Having a JSON based Plugin Directory has many benefits:
- It will live within the installation files, so it doesn’t have to be hosted by a third party.
- People can Pull-Request the JSON files to add/edit information, which makes it more collaborative.
- It doesn’t perform any http request containing your search or currently enabled plugins, so it’s more friendly with privacy. It just performs one request to download the zip file containing the plugin.
- It already works. So no need to edit the API or the Integraton. Could be implemented right now. It needs to handle updates but I’m already working on that. Simple solution: the plugin developer will host a version.txt file in the repository.
- If you are selling websites you can have your own preset list of safe plugins, and replace the whole JSON directory files so that the user only has access to the list you created. Maybe so that the person doesn’t break things or just because you want to keep things simple for that person, with a very specific list of potential plugins that may or may not be installed. Not every site needs to or even should be able to install Elementor, for example. So you could just not have this in your custom directory.
Looks like this:
Each of those json files contains everything it needs to know about the plugin.
Do you like this concept for ClassicPress? Why? Why not?