New project in the works
I’ve recently started working on a new little application that’s basically a custom configuration tool for WordPress. The idea came to me when I started working more intensively with WordPress, setting up multiple blogs, and doing the same damned thing time after time after time afte…well, you get the idea…
If you use the latest build, as you should, to stay secure, you invariably end up doing the copy/paste thing with themes and plugins you want to include when you upload the package. Problem is, even if you do include the plugins and themes in the package you ftp to your server, you still have to go in and select the theme, activate the plugins and so on.
Trust me, after you’ve done the 75th blog, it becomes real old real fast.
So, what I’ve got now is a little app that allows me to take the latest package from WordPress, as a freshly downloaded zip file, and from my desktop, add themes and plugins. Better yet, it modifies the install.php to set the new default theme, activate the selected plugins, set the first post (don’t you just hate that “Hello world” first post and “just another wordpress blog” tagline?) to whatever you want, and tweak the install file in a few other ways. It then zips the lot back up and voila, I have a custom WordPress installation package I can upload immediately, with all my default tweaks, ready to run.
Over the next week or two I’m planning to make it look pretty (I’m a geek, not a designer, so the UI’s truly hideous) and add some basic ftp functionality so I can upload the custom package direct to my server.
A 4 hour job cut down to 15 minutes! w00t!