Bundle your favorite WordPress plugins on WordPress.org and download them all in 1 zip package… that would be something I could really appreciate!

Always being busy with different websites, I notice that my management of plugins is not a very efficient one. Most important reason for this: I do not use 1 place to store them. As it appeared to me, this is a problem that more people encounter, especially webmasters and webpublishers that work on multiple blogs.

The idea of WP-plugin favorites is something to work out, so I think I will kick off with a few suggestions for this:

Add to plugin-favs

Now it should not be too difficult to add a tiny heart or other button to each plugin page over at WordPress.org and linking it to the user-database… As soon as you have logged in, this option is being displayed for each available plugin. That way you can easily and quickly select the plugins you require and add them to your personal favs.

Manage plugin-favs

Now after having selected a few plugins that you need, it would even be better if you can make different sets of favorite plugins… It could be as easy as tagging them, but in this case you the tag represents a “set”.

You make a set for “ipears.com”, a set for “multi-media blogs”, for “family blogs” and for instance “that super secret highly sociable blog project”.

The total of plugins in your favs stays the same, but you can have different sized sets, depending which of the plugins were “tagged” for that particular set.

Export plugin-favs in a zip-file

I am using Terminal more and more. Whenever I need 1 plugin quickly, I copy its download link location, switch to my terminal window, change the directory on my server to wp-content/plugins, type wget and paste the link location for the plugin download… downloading straight to my server is always super quick. Then I unzip the plugin file and remove (rm) the zip file.

Now this is handy for 1 plugin. But in an ideal situation, I would like to have the option to do this for a zip file that contains all the plugins I need for a certain project. So… in come the sets! It would be verrry convenient if each set I have created has a link to the zip file that contains all the plugins in that specific set.

I think this is something that can make many WordPress users very happy.

Maybe… there is even a better option! ↓

Import plugin-favs set into WordPress

How cool would it be if you could actually link your WordPress.org account to your standalone WordPress blog, go to Admin / Plugins and choose something like “Import Plugin-favs set”, select the set you want and import all the plugins in that set in one go? Seeing how easy the plugins are being upgraded from within WordPress admin…

…there must be a way to do this.

Share plugin sets?

Maybe a step too far, but I can imagine that there are moments that you would like to share a set of plugins that you think are unmissable for any blogger. Come to thnik of this after reading the article “WordPress SEO - The Definitive Guide to High Ranking for Your Blog” by fellow Dutchman Joost de Valk (aka Yoast).

Throughout this article he mentions multiple plugins that could be helpful to take your blog to a higher SEO level. It would be really convenient (for him and his readers) if in the end he could mention something like: “Get all the above mentioned WP-plugins together. You will find them in this plugin-favs set”

In the same line, it would be easy for podcasters to share what they use to optimize their blogs for letting hear their (literally) word of mouth. Or for more multimedia related blogs to share what plugins they use to get that viral video going. I think that there are enough ways to implement this.

Furthermore, it is a great way for plugin-writers to get some more exposure and feedback.

Plugin-Favs for WordPress?

Final question of course: “Will this be added to WordPress?”

After I hit the publish button for this post, I will post this also to the ideas forum at WordPress. Furthermore, I really am interested to hear what others think of this idea.

So please comment and link and lets see where this idea can lead to!

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