This page describes my efforts to create a Wordpress plugin that replaces the TinyMCE rich text editor (RTE) shipped along with wordpress by FCKeditor, a very powerful and easy to use RTE that is commonly used with many projects all around the web.

As a visitor of this blog told me that there already is such a plugin, I am no longer continuing the development of this plugin, but I will try to incorporate some of my features into Dean’s FCKeditor for Wordpress plugin, which I highly recommend.

Many people have asked to be able to replace the TinyMCE rich text editor (RTE) shipped along with WordPress by their favorite RTE. As my favorite RTE is FCKeditor (which I have successfully used in many projects), I have started to develop a plugin that is able to replace TinyMCE by FCKeditor. This greatly enhances the possibilities when writing articles in WordPress, like comfortably embedding flash, tables, and smileys , as well as text formatting.

There is still a lot to do (like connecting the image browser), but this article has actually been written with FCKeditor. Stay tuned for the first beta release!

Finally, PlugInstaller does also feature plugin downloads with cURL on servers that have fopen_wrappers disabled. You don’t need to configure anything, the plugin will automatically determine if fopen can open URLs and fall back to cURL support if fopen fails.

This is just a minor upgrade which does only add cURL support. More features will be introduced in the 0.2 version.

If you get the fopen(): url file-access is disabled in the server configuration error on using PlugInstaller, you should upgrade to this version.

More information and download

As a research towards version 0.2 of my plugInstaller Plugin I have developed a small php library that incorporates a fallback to cURL where fopen_wrappers are disabled. The problem with plugInstaller has been the fact that several servers do have fopen_wrappers disabled (for whatever reasons) and need to fall back to cURL to download files from the net. This is the case if some users of your script get the error message saying fopen(): url file-access is disabled in the server configuration.

As I do not want to rewrite the complete download code for plugInstaller, I have developed two small fopen/fclose replacement routines called uopen and uclose. When changing all fopen()/fclose() calls to uopen and uclose respectively within a script, the cURL fallback functionality is immediately enabled. uopen() and uclose() will check if fopen_wrappers are available and will then open or close the specified URL using fopen and fclose. If that fails (because fopen_wrappers are disabled), the functions will try to open the output of the cURL commandline utility as a process file handle. You can then use the returned file pointer as it were opened with fopen(). uopen and uclose work exactly the same way as fopen and fclose do (they take the same parameters and return the same values), so you may even use them for local file access.

If you are interested in using those two functions, just download them here (1,09 KB), they are released under the GPL!

So, nach meinem Login zeigt mir der “Tellerrand” (wieso eigentlich Tellerrand? Ich meine, eigentlich ermöglicht einem diese Seite doch, über selbigen hinauszusehen…) an, daß Wordpress 2.2 released sei. Mal schauen, ob ich in den nächsten Tagen die Zeit und Muße finde, mal ein Upgrade zu wagen. Wenn ich fertig bin, schreibe ich natürlich auch darüber, wies war und ob man das Ding brauchen kann. Naja, und eine größere Überarbeitung des Templates wäre vielleicht auch nicht unangebracht… verdammt, das klingt nach Arbeit.

PlugInstaller 0.1.5 has been released today! As promised, the following new features and fixes have been implemented:

• automatic uninstallation of plugins
• display readme file after installation
• display readme files for already installed plugins
• guess file type when downloading from a redirect page (does not work with wp-plugins.net)

more information and download…

The PlugInstaller WordPress plugin 0.1 has been released. This plugin enables you to install new plugins directly from your admin interface within a matter of seconds, without having to upload the plugin package(s) manually. PlugInstaller can upload a plugin archive from your harddisk or automatically download and install it from online sources (like the WordPress.org plugin repository).

More information and download

Current Version: 0.2.1

Are you using PlugInstaller? Please take this 2-minute survey about PlugInstaller!
Or you may want to consider donating to support the development of new features!
And if you miss a feature or functionality in the current version, post your feature wishes here!

If you don’t know which plugins you might try out, look at the plugin reviews page!

Table of Contents

1. Description
2. Download
3. Installation
4. Uninstallation
5. Changelog
6. Wishlist
7. Donate
8. Comments

About PlugInstaller

PlugInstaller is a WordPress plugin-management plugin that eliminates the need to download a plugin archive, upload it to your FTP server and unpack it manually. With PlugInstaller, you can easily enter a plugin URL (e.g. directly from a plugin repository website like the WordPress.org plugin repository) within the admin interface which is in turn automatically downloaded and installed on your server or you can upload a file from your local file system which is also automatically installed. If you do no longer like one or more plugins that you previously installed, you can uninstall those plugins with a single click.

Additionally, PlugInstaller features automatic update checking and automatic update installation for plugins that are hosted and downloaded from the wordpress.org plugin repository.

With PlugInstaller you will no longer have to use any other software than your WordPress administration interface to install or uninstall plugins. In addition to that, plugin installation will hardly last more than 5 to 10 seconds with PlugInstaller, as there is no user interference required. You can also display the readme file provided along with any installed plugins with a single click from your plugin management page.

PlugInstaller now also supports the installation of non-standard directory plugin packages (e.g. where the actual plugin is contained in a subdirectory of the main plugin directory). Additionally, if that should fail, there is an option to discover and delete “broken” plugin installations.

Download

Download (Linux/UNIX OS only!):

pluginstaller.0.2.1.zip (12.80 KB) (from the wordpress plugin repository)

Installation

Prerequisites:

Make sure your server has the following tools installed and readily available within the search path: “tar”, “gzip” and “unzip”. Also, set your wp-content/plugins directory to world-writeable (chmod -R 777 plugins) or at least writeable to your httpd user.

Installation:

1. Upload the plugin package to your wp-content/plugins directory
2. Unzip the package (unzip pluginst.zip)
3. Go to your “plugins” administration page and activate the PlugInstaller plugin
4. Read the instructions provided on the “Plugins/Install” page and inside the readme.txt file.

Note: For wordpress installations on windows servers, I recommend the OneClick installer plugin by Anirudh Sanjeev (project page and download), it’s currently not as powerful as PlugInstaller, but should work on windows machines, too.

Uninstallation

If you don’t like PlugInstaller anymore, you can easily uninstall it. However, you should not use PlugInstaller to uninstall itself, but delete the PlugInstaller directory manually, in your FTP client.

If you have uninstalled PlugInstaller, you might be confronted with “stuck” or “locked” plugin directories you cannot delete in your ftp client. The reason for this behavior is, that any plugins that were installed using PlugInstaller don’t belong to the user you are using to FTP into your installation, but belong to your webserver’s user (usually www-data, httpd or apache). Don’t worry, there is an easy way to fix this. If you have root access to your server, you might run a chmod -R 777 *  inside your plugin directory. If you don’t have root access (or if you don’t even know what “root access” means), please proceed as follows:

1. Download the file “unlock.zip“.
2. Install it using PlugInstaller or unzip it and upload it to your plugins directory.
3. With your webbrowser, go to “http://your.blog.domain/wp-content/plugins/unlock.php”
4. If you get a message saying “/path/to/your/wordpress/plugin/directory and all subdirectories have been unlocked”, you may delete the desired plugins.
5. I strongly recommend you delete the unlock.php file from your plugins directory, as it may open a possible security leak.

Changelog

New Features (0.2.1)

• Fixed a severe bug that could lead to complete unusability of all your installed plugins
• Fixed a minor issue with the uninstallation confirm message box

New Features (0.2.0)

• Enhanced the update mechanism (will now work with almost all wordpress.org hosted plugins)
• Support to install non-standard plugin packages
• Support to discover and remove broken plugin installations

New Feature (0.1.95)

• Fixed two bugs regarding warning messages on the plugin management page and for non-standard-directory wp installations.

New Features (0.1.9)

• completely redesigned and cleaned up plugins management page
• install and uninstall plugins directly from the plugins management page
• check for updates for wordpress.org hosted plugins (see FAQ section in the readme file)
• bug fixes for people with a non-standard directory installation of wordpress
• Important information for upgraders: The installation/uninstallation feature is no longer found on a separate admin page but within the main plugin management page!

New Feature (0.1.7)

• cURL fallback for people without fopen_wrappers (fixed from 0.1.6, thanks to angrycamel)

New Features (0.1.5)

• automatic uninstallation of plugins
• display readme file after installation
• display readme files for already installed plugins
• guess file type when downloading from a redirect page (does not work with wp-plugins.net)

Wishlist

Planned features:

• Browse the wordpress.org repository from your admin interface and directly install plugins with a single click (0.2.x)
• i18n (0.2.x)
• “Activate all” button for disabled plugins (0.2.x)
• Support for the wp-plugins.net repository (0.2.x)
• Ability to self-update PlugInstaller (0.2.x)

Do you still miss a feature? Post your feature request here!

Problems or comments?

Just write a comment below!

Nach meinen stundenlangen vergeblichen Versuchen, ein ansehnliches Widget-Theme zu finden, will ich Euch an meinen Erfahrungen mit der Konvertierung beliebiger Themes für die Wordpress-Widgets teilhaben lassen. Aber keine Sorge, das ist wesentlich einfacher als es sich zunächst anhört.

weiterlesen…

Tja, jetzt ist es also so weit… ich habe zwei Installationen von WordPress vorgenommen… Was um Himmels Willen hat mich geritten, Elisa gegenüber den Namen “Wordpress” zu erwähnen… sofort hieß es natürlich “was ist das”, und als ich ihr dann Julias Blog gezeigt habe, war die Begeisterung groß… Also schlag ich mir den gesamten Abend um die Ohren, um diese Installation vorzunehmen… naja, und dann hab ich mir gedacht, wieso machst Du Dir nicht auch sowas…

Und hier ist es!

Naja, is noch nicht ganz fertig, nach stundenlangem Herumbasteln am Template und diversen PHP-Methoden hab ich jetzt dann auch keinen Nerv mehr, das alles heute noch fertig zu kriegen (ich hoff nur, das wird keine Dauerbaustelle…), aber immerhin siehts (hoffentlich) schon mal nach was aus.