Theme Plugins Management System | TPMS by 5ubliminal

I hardly get excited about code!

I write code ... so much code every day, but very few times I'm actually really excited by a script / tool I make. Every now and then I get that Eurika! when I know I hit the jackpot. Very few times the jackpot is a monument of technical achievement. Most of the times, the script that makes me happy and excited is more or less technically challenging but it MAKES MY LIFE EASIER and helps me save time. The day I built this script was a happy day.

I had a new script that took my the harnessing of Wordpress' Power to another level.

Advertising / Content Alteration / Interface Modifications were all so much closer and easier to achieve using the Theme Plugins which I could now Activate / Deactivate just like regular ones. Handling a lot of plugins all pushed inside the functions.php or with many includes is cool ... if you have a lot of time to sort through every now and then. But if you want to keep things clean, neat and very easy to manage to ease your life and pay less to your coder ... this is one of those things.

I think you understand how I feel using this! The very header image of this blog is added with a Theme Plugin. Most of the UI changes you noticed recently is powered by Theme Plugins which I've gone crazy over.

The very complex installation process

Plugin Management Requires Special Skills

Introduction / Foreplay

As a plugin developer I write plugins for anything I need added to Wordpress. Truth is I’ve reached a considerable amount of plugins (100+). On the other hand I’ve come to the conclusion that, every now and then, you will need some plugins especially created for a certain theme. I call these Theme Plugins and the difference between them and the other Shared Plugins is that these rely on theme features and CSS styles.

A plugin written for a Light color theme will never fit a Dark color theme or those written for a certain Theme Location (right above the sidebar for example) therefore you will need theme plugins. But adding theme plugins to the already overcrowded Shared Plugin area was unthinkable and realized that having 5 themes I use and making 10 plugins for each would mean at least 50 more plugins. It was getting out of control.

First Attempt: Smart functions.php

I thought. I create a new /plugins/ folder inside the theme folder, list its internal files and load (include) them inside functions.php using the DirectoryIterator. But I thought of something. What if I built 25 plugins for a theme but on a certain blog I would enable only 5 and on another just 10 out of them. So the functions.php to load all inside plugins folder was a good idea but so out not fit for the new desired functionality.

Then … I had a dream!

What if I built a new Theme Plugins Manager?

Wow. Good idea! I envisioned a new Plugin Manager like the one in Wordpress but which would list different plugins for each theme based on its folder structure which I will explain later on.

Each plugin it listed would have a potential to carry a header just like the Wordpress plugins that would have a name, author, plugin URL and so on. Best of all, on each blog you could just Activate/Deactivate the theme plugins you wanted.

Totally versatile!

Let me have it!

Not yet cowboy.

Script, Manual, Examples, Affiliate Opportunities & Pricing will be added shortly. It was so easy writing the script ... the manual is so much more difficult. I'm drooling over the keyboard o.O Those interested to get affiliated use the comment form below. It's set to private comments. You can say anything!