Hi All,
We have need of multiple plugin directories.
About our setup:
We have many, many sites on WordPress and would like to have a Core WordPress install that that is under version control and a would be duplicated throughout all sites and a Contents directory that would have site-specific content, such as the theme, as well as site-unique plugins - this would be under a separate repository from the Core WordPress.
Each of our sites has four different and separate environments: DEV, QA, STAGE, and PROD.
I realize this seems like an easy job for MU, however we can't use MU because:
--1) We can not have sites or even an individual site's environments sharing a database due to stability concerns
--2) The mu-plugins folder does not look into directories, and thus will negate the use of many plugins out there. (the idea of mu-plugins looking into directories has been rejected: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/14359)
Here is the structure we would like to implement:
SITE DOCROOT
-CORE WORDPRESS (version controlled, repository used by all sites and their individual environments)
--Wordpress install
--*NEW OPTION* CORE plugins
-SITE CONTENT (version controlled, repository unique to this site and its environments)
--themes
--uploads
--Site plugins (normal WordPress plugins directory)
---Includes a pointer to CORE plugins, perhaps a symlink
The problem with this implementation:
While we can create a relative symlink to the CORE plugins folder from inside the Site plugins folder, it will only look one directory deep for the plugin files. We need it to look at least two.
We have done many experiments with get_plugins and all_plugins without positive results.
The change we would like:
Can the default WordPress plugins functionality be changed to search more than one directory deep when looking for, and interacting with, plugins?
thank you for any help,
Scott Nath
Senior Developer, Web Development
NBCUniversal Operations & Technical Services
iansane 
