New to the community? Start here

Custom Themes and upgrades plugin

Is there a way to limit the amount of themes someone can select, and make more custom themes a plugin add-on?

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 7:03:29
  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    We have a client who does this. The themes, normally turned off for general use at Dashboard -> Site Admin -> themes, are all named with “Advanced – ” as part of the theme name. When folks buy the upgrade or send in the cash, she just goes in SA -> Blog -> Edit and manually adds them in. Takes like 10 seconds.

    Probably could automate it though.

  • realsol
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    Thanks. I have a theme developer (my son) who wanted to create a directory of his custom these, and not have these included in the list of themes the user can choose from unless they upgrade. Selecting them is what we are doing now. Hoping to automate this process.

    I was trying to figure out 2 things:

    1. How to automate the above and

    2. How to keep custom themes in a separate directory, but having them merged somehow with the other themes if a user upgrades.

    I really like the idea of keeping all custom themes out of the standard themes directory. Hate seeing a whole bunch of inactive themes when editing the blogs via the sa > blogs > edit.

  • Andrew
    • Champion of Loops

    Hiya,

    1. How to automate the above and

    Just code a plugin to check and see if a upgrade package is active. If it is then the plugin should make sure certain themes (defined by an array possibly) are allowed for the blog. If the package is not active it should make sure the themes are not allowed for the blog.

    2. How to keep custom themes in a separate directory, but having them merged somehow with the other themes if a user upgrades.

    Why the need for the separate directory?

    Thanks,

    Andrew

  • realsol
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    Just code a plugin to check and see if a upgrade package is active. If it is then the plugin should make sure certain themes (defined by an array possibly) are allowed for the blog. If the package is not active it should make sure the themes are not allowed for the blog.

    I am new to both wordpress and wordpress MU so doing the above I guess will take a little more time since I don’t understand how to activate them per blog from php. Does anyone have an example they could share?

  • Andrew
    • Champion of Loops

    Unfortunately I don’t have any code that would be helpful for this one. This is one of the very few areas we haven’t dealt with yet.

    Next year I really want to put together a new Upgrades plugin and some sort of extra themes feature is something I’d like to either build in or provide an addon for.

    Thanks,

    Andrew