WPCustomRepository (= WPCR)

Everyone who used Wordpress at least once or twice knows about the wordpress.org plugin/theme repository. It allows your Wordpress site to automatically pull updates for your plugins and themes (if you installed them from there).

I developed a plugin exclusive to one client to be installed on nine different sites. Very soon I was tired of manually updating the plugin on such a number of sites. Hence I started developing a custom Wordpress repository. It's intentionally held quite simple. All you can do is log in/out and upload new plugin versions. Currently I'm developing more features.

There is still a lot to do. That means that not everything will work 100%.

Features

• Automatic plugin updates
• Automatic theme updates
• Tracking of active installations (unsure)

Requirements

• PHP 7
• A MySQL/MariaDB database
• Some MB of webspace (remember the uploaded plugin/theme files also take up some space)
• Apache (or Nginx) with rewrite module
• Composer

Installation

Part I: On your server

• Step 0: Create a (sub)domain and a VirtualHost.

• Step 1: Upload the WPCR (WPCustomRepository) files on your webserver, either by zip file or a git clone https://github.com/KaiserWerk/WPCustomRepository.git.

• Step 2: Do the infamous composer install to get started.

• Step 3: Edit the values in the config.yml file according to your needs. Most of them are optional.

• Step 4: Import the sql dump file from the etc directory.

• Step 5: Create an administrative user with the following command: php bin/console --create-user --admin and enter the details as asked.

• Optional Step 6: If you have composer installed locally but not on your server or if it's just a basic webspace, you can do the whole installation locally and upload everything to your webspace. Just remember to edit the config.yml file.

Part II: In your custom plugin

• Step 1: Add the file etc/plugin-updater.php to your plugin directory.

• Step 2: Change the class name in the file to something unique, ideally add the name of your plugin as prefix or suffix , e.g. plugin_updater_pluginname or similar. (If you forget to do this it will still work but you cannot use another custom plugin with the updater code.)

• Step 3: include the plugin-updater.php file and create a new instance of it, e.g. new plugin_updater_pluginname();

• Optional Step 4: Use the parameters to hardcode specific values: new plugin_updater_pluginname(string $endpoint, string $license_user, string $license_key, string $slug, bool $disable_sslverify)

Contributing

First, make a feature request/open an issue. If I don't have the time to take care of it, feel free to create a pull request. Also, feel free to fork and create your own, better version!

Support

• Open an issue
• Send me an electronic letter: m@r-k.mx

Further Reading & Thoughts

In order for newly uploaded plugin versions to be recognized, the version string in the main file's header comment must be higher than the currently installed version's. Naturally, it would make no sense to execute an automatic update to the same version that is already installed.

An automatic installation would be really great, but to my knowledge this is not currently possible. I am currently trying out ways to override the installation process.

TODO

• Pull new plugin versions direct from GitHub/BitBucket (work in progress)