Quick reality check: time to stop scattering my poor overworked brain over 2000 different pet projects.

It ain’t gonna be pretty in the end.

Actually, it’s starting to show: WPPM hasn’t been properly updated in months now (only quick bug-fixes) and it’s badly bursting at the seams. It started as a very nifty project, with hundreds of cool ideas for improvement. But currently, it’s looking increasingly like that aging self-conscious hipster, surfing the wave of a long faded glory and barely tolerated by most, on account of its past coolness… In short: it’s creating more trouble for users than worth (and all apologies to those who downloaded that very broken version I just uploaded a few days ago, in a misguided attempt at doing some sort of damage control).

The latest version of WPPM has been removed from the download archives. I could probably roll it back to the old version, but frankly, I am not that much more comfortable with people downloading it: sure it does the job OK, but under the hood, things aren’t that pretty. If you are still using it and happy with it, though, not a reason in the world to change.

Assessing the situation in a nutshell:

  • WPPM is not permanently discontinued. Actually, depending on some external ongoing development efforts, it might come back as early as this week. Or later if I need to wait for the time to take care of it myself. But it will come back in one form or another (and likely in a better form): you have my word.
  • This doesn’t affect wp-plugins.net in the slightest. As both a developer or a user, you can still enjoy all the advantages of the plugin repository over there. And when WPPM 2 comes up, you’ll instantly have access to any plugin listed on the website.
  • For those who have been following my recent whining with regards to WordPress matters and Spam Karma 2, this decision has nothing to do with it. And I do want to make it clear absolutely nothing…

OK, you know what… That last point? In fact, maybe it does. In a very indirect way. In that it has increased the amount of time I had to dedicate somewhere else and forced me to stop spreading myself thin, which isn’t such a bad thing. But the core issues with WPPM are mine from start to finish: a very hasty and downright shoddy programming job (as is typical with this kind of project, it grew out of a very dirty “temporary” piece of code, that was never meant to last past a short “proof-of-concept” stage… yea right…), a dire lack of time resources, not enough efforts to collaborate with interested parties or other similar projects (must. stay. on the. humble. path… gnnnn… no finger pointing… gnnnnnn… ok. good. I think it’s gone. Moving on) etc. etc.

Anyway, sorry for the very needlessly tragic dimension this announcement has taken. It seems I cannot manage to do so much as turn on my computer without throwing grandiloquents monologues these days. Must be hormonal or something (damn, am I pregnant again!?! sure hope not). After all, we are merely talking about a bunch of zero’s and one’s that stop occupying a spot on the world wild intarweb, and presumably not even in a durable way… More meaningful things have been known to happen about every milliseconds in all corners of the planet…

Come back later for an update, and in the meantime, feel free to check out all the other cool stuff we have to offer on this digital loveboat of a website.

32 Responses to “WPPM”

oso says:

Regardless, thanks for all the time you put into it. Would love to see it make a comeback.

1989 says:

Please update it asap. Hope you make it such that there’s no need to modify the php.ini file coz it is restricted. Please update it.

Brint says:

Absolutly love the project. I hope we will see an update again soon, but take care of your self first :)

Robert says:

Thanks for all the work you’ve put into the project and the repository. Hey, the repository alone is a valuable resource that we all benefit from, so thank you for that, too.

All the best.

Jon Abad says:

Dr.Dave! Say it isn’t so!

If there are any knucklehead portions of the next project that I can help with, I am at your disposal.

I always point to the plugin manager as the direction of future awesomeness and i’m looking forward to its reincarnation.

unrealdark says:

HI. Recently I installed plugin manager. I had problems. So I went to delete all files from FTP. I got errors. Actually I cant delete your files. permissions??
What can I do? I cant change file permissions.

Thx

mufasa says:

I too always point to the plugin manager as the direction of future awesomeness. Although I probably said ‘wppm is teh leet, if only more of teh web based app’s were as teh user friendly, and teh cool’. Nuff said.

Good luck doc and thanks for a more complete vision of how things should be done if nothing else.

Edwin says:

I used the plugin manager all the time, since I discoverd it, and I really found it a cool tool. I’m very impressed with it, and hope the new version will be as cool as this one was.

Thanks for your time on this.

Greg says:

Hope it comes back soon :)

zz85 says:

Sorry I must have forgotten mentioned this here for a long time until I saw a referrer coming from his site.

In my blog,
http://www.lab4games.net/zz85/blog/2005/05/21/new-wp-plugins-installed/
or
http://www.lab4games.net/zz85/blog/2005/05/21/trying-wppm-170b/
I might have mentioned that I had a fix for wppm, modified of a 1.70 version i found.

I didnt post my link then so I’ll do it here. http://www.lab4games.net/zz85/blog/wp-content/wp-plugin-mgr1.7.0c.phps

I considered it quite stable for my usage, but if fopen url wrappers is not support on the server, most likely the script not work even with wget alternative.

Ajay D'Souza says:

Thanks for the bug-fixes zz85.

Using it on my blog :)

And Dr. Dave, I shall await the release of WPPM 2 …

tgs says:

Just started using WP so never actually used it – but id love to give it a try – looks like it would save quite some time. But rock on with whats important mate.

zencoder says:

Hey dr Dave, I was completely unaware of any issues with WPPM, SK, WP

Anonymous says:

quick question, are all the plugins at wp-plugins.net wordpress 1.5.1+ compatiable ? I’d like to stick with only compatiable plugins

Ike says:

I can’t believe some of you are posting troubleshooting questions… Did you not read Dave’s article?

Anyhoo, great project concept. Thanks for what you’ve done with it thus far.

Sonny says:

Thanks for all your work on the project. It seems to be functioning for me, so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I look forward to when updates resume.

Sonny

rolandog says:

Well, it was THE plugin while it lasted! Thanks a lot for having devoted your time and skills in such a generous way.

mufasa says:

It still works, so it is still lasting in my opinion, hope somebody else develops one or takes over from this one. Or maybe wordpress will do one?

[...] There are also references to recent comments plugins – one, another one. Both of those can be installed by the WordPress Plugin Manager but that seems to be offline for now. The second plugin referenced describes a manual install that doesn’t seem too bad. [...]

Diwaker says:

So whats the latest on WPPM? With the number of Wordpress plugins growing everyday, its becoming harder and harder for me to manage the plugins I use — keep them updated, let alone install and test new ones. We really need WPPM now more than ever before. And even the download link has disappeared now!!

I’d love to help anyway I can. Has anyone volunteered to take over maintainership of the plugin?

mufasa says:

Are you offering Diwalker – You can now donate to unknown genius so I would start there. A couple of us guys from NZ are donating so why don’t people give it a shot. I can not believe this is not a piece of core word press functionality yet.

Donate!

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr

[...] We’d like to make the process of finding, installing and upgrading plugins and themes for WordPress far easier than it is now. So we undertook twin projects—a directory where you can find extensions, and Alchemy, which is its complimentary plugin to manage them. Inspired by Dr Dave’s trailblazing work on a plugins database and plugin manager, Elixir takes their best parts and advances the concept much further. [...]

mufasa says:

This type of functionality should be included in wordpress 1.6
Forget the nice looking “header tools”, and I’m so fancy “post formatting” crap :P
This stuff is actually useful!!!!!!

Any possibility of getting access to a beta version atleast?

–An avid Internet browser

[...] I will move the plugin in the next few days to dev.wp-plugins.org to enable versioning and SVN access. A One-Click-Installer for wp-plugins.net was also planned, but the needed plugin "WordPress Plugin Manager" was temporary discontinued. Stay tuned for upcoming releases with new features. [...]

Lara says:

*poking you with a stick*

Been almost a year now, Dr. Dave!!! This plugin was a godsend at one point, and it breaks my wp-lovin’-heart that you haven’t revived it, and that no one else has tried to HELP to revive it.

Can’t we please get this on our wish list??? PLEASE?!?!

Lautreamont says:

“I’d love to help anyway I can. Has anyone volunteered to take over maintainership of the plugin?”

The might say what they need. Other things than money as we do not have. Yet we could help someway. Just let us know.

Alejandro says:

Hi!

it’s has been more than a year already and we have no news about the project :( Are you still working on it? we hope so ;)

Saludos
Alejandro

[...] A grande vantagem deste método e a possibilidade de mudar de tema sem traumas, sem precisar editar praticamente nada. Basta que o novo tema também seja compatível com o Widgets plugin e voilá, “tudo como antes no quartel de Abrantes”. Não é necessário editar templates para adicionar funcionalidades, o que é realmente um grande facilitador para o novato que já custa a entender que precisa dar upload de um plugin (Aliás bem que o Wordpress poderia ter uma interface simples para dar uploads de plugins. Olha aí o que realmente falta, um bom gerenciador de plugins, como já houve…). [...]

[...] A grande vantagem deste método e a possibilidade de mudar de tema sem traumas, sem precisar editar praticamente nada. Basta que o novo tema também seja compatível com o Widgets plugin e voilá, “tudo como antes no quartel de Abrantes”. Não é necessário editar templates para adicionar funcionalidades, o que é realmente um grande facilitador para o novato que já custa a entender que precisa dar upload de um plugin (Aliás bem que o Wordpress poderia ter uma interface simples para dar uploads de plugins. Olha aí o que realmente falta, um bom gerenciador de plugins, como já houve…). [...]

Maj says:

A lot of people really liked this project. I hope development will resume sometime soon. This is one of those projects that I was hoping would someday become a part of Wordpress’s default install. I always say “why make a person do something the computer can do for them.”

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