Oneclick plugin for wordpress.
Written by Anirudh Sanjeev
http://anirudhsanjeev.org




Description:

Oneclick is my first wordpress plugin. It allows uploading of a plugin or theme without the need of manually uploading by FTP, allowing the upload from the Admin panel.
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Introduction

There are, on average, ten plugins and themes released for wordpress everyday. Though the wonderful extendibility is good for you, trying these out can be such a chore, that you often would choose not to try it out in the first place. Presenting the solution to that problem.

OneClick is an extension for the wordpress blogging platform which was designed to simplify the procedure of installation of other plugins and themes. This procedure, which usually involves uploading the contents of a zip file via FTP to your remote server, into the appropriate directory, and then activating it by the wordpress admin interface, is comparatively very slow, technically challenging, and requires a separate client.

OneClick doesn’t have any separate functionality except to function in the position of the FTP client. OneClick gets a zip file from a remote URL or from the user’s hard drive, and then unzips the files in the appropriate directory.

And yes, OneClick is the only wordpress plugin ever to come with it's own firefox extension.
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Features

OneClick doesen't impart any specific functionality to your website. It doesen't enhance search engine placement, it doesen't encourage commenting, increase subscribers, or anything. It just makes life easier for you: the blog administrator. By ridding of the long and annoying process of FTP, it saves you hours of time in deploying weblogs, modifying them and trying out new extensions. Among this, it can do other things. Like:

   1. Uploading of themes and files with only the URL.
   2. Deleting misbehaving plugins from an interface that is completely independent of wordpress. Some plugins can mess up your entire install, and deleting them is the best way to fix them.
   3. Backup
   4. Activate the theme in the Dashboard › Presentation menu
   5. Enjoy

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Installing

Please follow these instructions carefully. OneClick is very very path sensitive. It means if you mess the paths up, it will not work, and potentially endangers all your data.
Part I:

   1. Download the zip file from the project page.
   2. Unzip the zip file on your local hard drive. It should create a folder called “oneclick” that has some PHP files in it. Do NOT change the name of the folder or any files.
   3. Open your FTP client, connect to your server and log on.
   4. Navigate to your wp-content/plugins/ folder. Copy the entire “oneclick” folder to the wp-content folder. DO NOT COPY ONLY THE FILES. I cannot stress this enough.
      The folder structure should be: <blog_root>/wp-content/plugins/oneclick/. Thus, oneclick.php, the main module, should be at <blog_root>/wp-content/plugins/oneclick/oneclick.php.

Part 2:

   1. Download a FTP client that is capable of executing CHMOD/Permissions. I recommend FileZilla or CuteFtp or whatever.
   2. Navigate to wp-content, and CHMOD the “plugins” folder to 0777. Here’s how you do it:
         1. Most clients have an option for CHMOD or Permissions right in the right click context menu. Some clients like FireFtp have the option in the “properties” menu. Open the CHMOD/Permissions option for the “plugins” folder.
         2. If you’re allowed to enter a value for the CHMOD, select 0777, or if you have to manually select the permissions, give Read/Write/Execute permission for all the Owner/Group/Everyone.
         3. Similarly, set the permissions for the following directories:
               1. wp-content/themes/
               2. wp-content/plugins/
               3. wp-content/plugins/oneclick/

If you feel you’ve done everything, go to the admin page, which is the second tab of the Dashboard. The plugin checks if the folders are configured correctly, and displays happy faces if they are working fine.
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Screenshots for installation
Some screenshots for the confused. How to modify preferences using filezilla. It's opensource and available on sourceforge.




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Installing from hard drive:

Installing from the hard drive is pretty easy and straightforward. All you have to do is browse for the file that you want to upload and click on “GO”, and if everything works okay, you should be able to go and activate your new plugin or theme.
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Installing from remote url:

Installation from the remote URL works smoothly. The only problem is if the URL is not of a zip file, then the plugin will not work. When you’re getting the URL, be sure it’s the correct URL for download, and not a link to another webpage. Some plugin authors sometime put a text saying “download the plugin here” and that might lead to the plugin page.
Just be confident you’re entering the correct url while installing. And installation should go smoothly.
The same goes with using the firefox extension.


Zip file requirement:

   1. This software simply goes and unzips the file in the corresponding directory, based on plugin or theme.
   2. Certain advanced forms of compression can be used by WinZip at higher levels of compression (Like enhanced deflate, etc) which won’t work with this plugin. To be safe, I’d recommend that you zip it with winrar. (yeah, go ahead and point the irony out.)

Why Use OneClick?

   1. FTP is slow and requires many transactions, and waits before uploading each file, etc.
   2. ZIP files are smaller, and code compresses very well, so uploading is faster. POST uploads are much faster than FTP.
   3. If you’re not at your own terminal, and somewhere else, then you might have to download an FTP client and configure it before using any theme/plugin.
   4. Think about it… would you rather unpack a zip, open a separate client, navigate to the right folder (which is painfully slow) and then upload the entire folder, which takes more than fifteen minutes, or would you log on to your dashboard, and upload through OneClick, which takes less than fifteen seconds.
   5. Lastly, some people like me are behind a strong firewall, preventing FTP access making uploading almost impossible. This plugin was written for the sole reason of circumventing that, and so it has :)

What NOT to do?

   1. Change any filenames or directory names. Most wordpress plugins work even if you change the directory names during install, but not this one. the paths are very sensitive, so don’t rename it!! Don’t change oneclick to Oneclick or anything like that, just upload and delete the FTP client.
   2. Be careful while deleting folders through the delete interface, it won’t ask for confirmation, and if you accidentally delete your super customized theme, I won’t be responsible.

Screenshots:

I would’ve included screenshots of this working but I have to leave in a few minutes, but screenshots of the RC1 version are in this post, and there’s really no difference except for a couple of optimizations and a nice about section.
Credits:

   1. This plugin uses the PCLZip library released under GPL.
   2. OneClick was written in whole by me, over two days with the total development time of four hours. This plugin is also released under the GPL.

Upcoming Features:

Here are some of the many features coming in the next installment. I don’t have much time, patience or technical expertise for implementing a few of them (plus I get a headache after staring at a computer screen for an hour), so expect this in a month or so.

   1. Install a plugin using only the url of the zip file. Don’t even need to download them
   2. Back up all your plugins/themes in a zip file and download them, for easy moving
   3. Downloadable “plugin packs” and “theme packs” which are parsable xml files allowing several themes/plugins to be installed at one go. Example: dark theme pack, antispam plugin pack, seo plugin and theme pack. This has some slight “legal” type issues to be taken care of, but more on that later.
   4. Software to install themes and plugins from the comfort of your desktop. Don’t even need to login.[this works on a POST request]
   5. More languages, integration with wordpress upgrade plugin, and more…