Plugins: Activate vs. Network Activate

  • cdvrooman

    (@cdvrooman)


    13 years, 3 months ago

    I’m re-starting this based on a post in the Alpha/Beta portion of the forum.

    First, the definitions laid down by Ipstenu:

    Activate – Activate for THIS site only (this blog being whichever one you’re in at the time). These will be permitted to be activated or deactivated on ANY blog. These go in the normal /wp-content/plugins folder.

    Network Activate – Activate for all sites on this install. These go in the normal /wp-content/plugins folder. All children sites can see that this is installed via plugins.

    Must Use – Activate for all sites, and permit none to turn it off. These are installed in /wp-content/mu-plugins (which if it doesn’t exist, you can create just by making a new folder). These are HIDDEN from children sites if you’re not the site-admin. Useful for plugins that have no admin-panel šŸ™‚

    Note: if the mu-plugins directory does not exist, just create it yourself in the wp-content directory.

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Thread Starter cdvrooman

    (@cdvrooman)

    13 years, 3 months ago

    justbishop, Ruben.cc & Andrea_r worked out that the BuddyPress plugin should go in the /plugins directory and should be “Network Activated”. In fact, Andrea_r pointed out that just “Activating” BuddyPress will still cause it to automatically “Network Activate” itself no matter what.

    Additionally, althouh BuddyPress is Network Activated, it will remain hidden from user site Admins.

    Thread Starter cdvrooman

    (@cdvrooman)

    13 years, 3 months ago

    Just for clarity, I’m summarizing the posts from this original post: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugins-activate-vs-network-activate.

    Thread Starter cdvrooman

    (@cdvrooman)

    13 years, 3 months ago

    ironclad pointed out this plugin, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exclude-plugins/ for making plugins in the /plugins directory that have been Network Activated remain hidden from site admin users.

    Two additional side notes about the Exclude-Plugins plugin:

    1. You can configure newly installed plugins to automatically be excluded from user site admins; a nice feature to keep them from playing with a plugin you just installed and want to configure a certain way.

    2. You have the possibility to “Force Deactivate” plugins that were originally visible to the user site admins, i.e. not excluded, that you have since excluded using the plugin. However, since those plugins will ‘no longer exist’ for the site admins, they won’t be able to deactivate them. This is the work around to deactivate all plugins that have been excluded.

    Finally, a personal note. Be carefull using Exclude Plugins and “Force Deactivate” with the s2Member plugin or you could lose that important functionality very easily.

    Thread Starter cdvrooman

    (@cdvrooman)

    13 years, 3 months ago

    amandafrench mentioned:

    “I haven’t found it to be the case that “All children sites can see that this is installed via plugins” when using Network Activate. I know that for multisite-specific plugins such as BuddyPress, Network Activate is the *only* option, and in such cases the plugin isn’t visible to child site administrators.

    But for other regular plugins, such as Akismet, when I “Network Activate,” the child admins can’t see that plugin anywhere in their Plugin admin menu — all they can see is how many plugins are Network Activated, not which ones they are.

    See screenshot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amandafrench/4977130955/ That’s a child site. The Akismet plugin is the only one activated on the network. The child admin has the (limited) config menu for Akismet, but the plugin isn’t listed either in the “All” or in “Network Activated” lists of plugins. Same has been true for lots of other plugins I’ve tried.”

    Thread Starter cdvrooman

    (@cdvrooman)

    13 years, 3 months ago

    I posted the following:

    Hello,
    I’m using WPMU 3.0.3, BP 1.2.7 & s2Member in multi-blog mode with open registration & blog creation.
    Ok… I disabled Akismet, and then moved it to the wp-content/mu-plugins directory and now it’s not appearing in my plugin list.

    Seven questions:

    1. In my case, I had already configured Akismet with my “Akismet API Key”, but if I had installed it directly into /mu-plugins and then not have seen it on the plugins page, how would I have entered the API Key?

    2. Now is everybody using *my* Akismet installation based on my API Key?? Previously I had “Network Activated” Akismet. then I added a new test account (with blog) as a sub-domain. When I logged in as the account owner and went to the Plugins page of the Admin, Akismet was asking me to enter an API Key (which is actually something I don’t want to make each new account owner go through; transparency is important).

    3. Let’s say in general I’m using Plugin X which has a couple of configuration settings. If the plugin is in mu-plugins and I need to upgrade the plugin and tweak its configuration, what is the best procedure for going about that?
    For example:
    a. move/rename plugin in /mu-plugins
    b. install latest version in /plugins
    c. activate
    d. configure settings
    e. deactivate
    f. move to /mu-plugins

    4. What happens when I have the same plugin installed in *both* /plugins and /mu-plugins? Which takes precedence? What if one version is newer than the other?

    5. If a plugin in mu-plugins/ doesn’t show up even in the master site’s plugins list, how do I know it is actually working (for example, Akismet shows a list of working servers on their site under Settings).

    6. When upgrading WordPress, one step is to deactivate all plugins. What about mu-plugins… how are they deactivated.

    7. I found this link, http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/4163/how-is-network-activate-different-from-activate-by-implementation

    Where the accepted answer is this:
    “Network activation will activate a plug-in for every site in a network whereas regular activation will only activate a plug-in for the site you’re currently on. As far as implementation goes, there is one other important difference:

    If your plug-in is built to do something when it’s activated (via register_activation_hook()), this will fire automatically when you activate a plug-in normally, but it will not fire for a network-activated plug-in until you visit the admin screen for each blog.

    So if major database updates are tied in to register_activation_hook() they won’t occur until you log in to the other sites.”

    What about mu-plugins? How do they relate to the firing of register_activation_hook()?

    Thanks,
    Christopher.

    Thread Starter cdvrooman

    (@cdvrooman)

    13 years, 3 months ago

    And amandafrench replied:

    Ipstenu, my child site admins *can’t* choose to turn off Network Activated plugins, as far as I can tell, because they can’t see them anywhere in their plugins list. See the screenshot in my earlier post if you don’t believe me. Sounds like other people have that problem too, though I don’t know if everyone does. Can I see a screenshot of a plugin that’s “Network Activated” where the plugin *does* show up in a child admin’s Plugins list?

    My settings are “User accounts may be registered” and I’ve enabled the Plugins admin menu for child site admins.

    cdvrooman, I can help a little with the Akismet, at least. Here’s what you should do:

    1) Get an Akismet API key for multiple sites at https://akismet.com/signup/ — unfortunately, this costs money, at least $5 per month depending on your site’s purpose.

    2) Make sure Akismet is in the regular “plugins” folder and not in “mu-plugins.”

    3) “Network Activate” Akismet and enter your multi-site API key. That’ll turn it on for all child sites as well as for your site.

    Basically I’m almost never using mu-plugins at all, even when I want all the child sites to use the plugin.

    Thanks Amanda!

    Thread Starter cdvrooman

    (@cdvrooman)

    13 years, 3 months ago

    Then Ipstenu suggested the post be reopened in Multisite since that is now up and running and here were are.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    šŸ³ļøā€šŸŒˆ Advisor and Activist

    13 years, 3 months ago

    Yeah, I was wrong about child sites being able to turn off network activated plugins. I so rarely login as non-super-admin, I forget. šŸ™‚

    The one important thing your omitting is that different Plugins are written to behave differently. As Andrea mentioned with BuddyPress, since it ca ONLY work with Network Activate, it can only be network activated. So. There’s no one blanket answer for how you should do it šŸ™‚

    Which brings me around to “what’s your question in all this?”

    Thread Starter cdvrooman

    (@cdvrooman)

    13 years, 3 months ago

    Getting back on track…

    I think I may have answers for my own questions 3 & 5 … the Exclude-Plugin mentioned by ironclad would allow plugins to be kept in the /plugins directory and thus they could be both deactivated if necessary during an upgrade as well as being able to review their settings (as the Super Admin).

    Also, I found this plugin: Proper Network Activation, that addresses the concern I raised in my question number 7.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    šŸ³ļøā€šŸŒˆ Advisor and Activist

    13 years, 3 months ago

    You can force Akismet to use just ONE API key by editing the akismet.php file (there are directions in there).

    No one can answer 3, because, again, each plugin is different.

    4 will wreak stuff, don’t try. I would think mu-plugins would take precedence, but conflicts would arise.

    You deactivate the mu-plugins by renaming the folder.

    Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    13 years, 3 months ago

    With regards to the mu-plugins folder and what you should put in it – *only* plugins that specifically state you can.

    That’s the general rule.

    If the plugin instructions make no note of the mu-plugins folder, follow that.

    In almost all cases, there should hardly be anything in the mu-plugins folder. Remember, that folder is uesd to run the code inside it as if it were part of wordpress itself. you can never turn it off.

    well, unless you rename the folder, and as ipstenu has stated, renaming it does the trick.

    If you’re worried about upgrades, a lot of us just upgrade the whole network without turning off plugins (it’s hard to tell who has what turned on in a few hundred blogs) but we like to live on the edge.

    My general blanket statement about when to use the mu-plugins folder has *always* been “it depends”.

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
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