UPDATE 08-18-07

I have been banging emails back and forth between the author of OneClick and myself while testing his plugin and due to this and his efforts in making OneClick as stable as possible, he has released a new version this morning (0.9.8) that incorporates the failsafe fix as shown below. And this new release also takes care of a couple of other minor bugs so once you upgrade to the latest version, you no longer have to change any of the plugin’s code.

But there’s something else you need to know…

OneClick Upgrades Itself!

OneClick upgrades itself right from the OneClick page without the user having to do anything at all but click the upgrade link in the “Smilie” section of the OneClick page and follow two simple instructions. No going to the site, downloading, extracting or uploading via FTP required. Just click on a link right in your WP Admin and watch the darn thing do everything itself. One small insignificant bug I found in this new version is that when you upgrade from the OneClick page it will tell you that you’ve successfully upgraded to version 0.9.7 when it should state 0.9.8. The correct version number is shown on your plugins page though so no worries there…just a minor typo glitch.

So why am I taking all this trouble to keep you folks updated about OneClick? Because currently, the author is having trouble with his name registrar and his site is down. This doesn’t interfere with OneClick’s ability to upgrade itself though since the plugin itself resides elsewhere. Another reason is that OneClick along with the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin is going to cause a not so minor revolution in the way WordPress bloggers do things from now on. These two plugins alone will allow the average WP blogger to devote a good deal more time to writing good content and working the “front end” of of their blog which, after all, is what blogging is all about, rather than having to spend a significant amount of time upgrading their WP install every time a new security release hits the streets or mucking about with all the downloading/extracting/uploading of plugins and themes.

When Anirudh does get his site back up and running I’ll post it here and then take a back seat so he can drive.

I’m also willing to bet that we’ll see a lot more WordPress newbies around that have been previously holding off due to the complexities of maintaining the WordPress install. There’s still going to be a learning curve for any new WP blogger to work through of course, but the biggest hassles have just been eliminated for most* of us.

* I’m sure there are going to be hosts/servers out there that will keep either or both of these plugins from working due to ridiculous restrictions and lack of permissions. Who knows, maybe WordPress and these great plugin authors of ours will force these hosts to finally adopt a set standard…maybe. One can always hope.

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Two plugins that are going to change the world of WordPress blogging and the way things are done are the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin and the new OneClick plugin which automatically uploads and installs themes and plugins into your WordPress install. From your admin and through the use of a Firefox extension.

At this point in time, since both plugins need to call on the zip libraries for extraction a small fix needs to be applied to a bit of code in the plugin’s oneclick.php in order to keep them from arguing about it and OneClick failing in the process. Simply do the following:

change:

require_once(‘pclzip.lib.php’);

to:

if(!class_exists(‘PclZip’))
{
require_once(‘pclzip.lib.php’);
}

I happen to use a specific program to edit any php but all you really have to do is login to your blog’s Admin and head to the plugins/plugin editor and bring up “OneClick” (from the right sidebar) into the editor and scroll down around halfway until you see the above snippet of code and just make the change as indicated above. This change will allow OneClick to operate alongside any plugin that calls upon the zip libraries whereas the plugin will only call up the libraries if they have not been called up already.

The author of OneClick will be releasing an update in the next few days to the plugin and the Firefox extension to take care of this particular bug and a couple other minor problems.

That’s it…have fun. Oh, and don’t forget to drop by the author’s website and give him a thanks. Same goes for the author of WAUP. After all…they just made our lives a heck of a lot easier didn’t they?

Technorati tags: WordPress Automatic Upgrade, WAUP, OneClick, automatic plugin install, wordpress