Cleaner Plugin Installer

Cleaner Start Page for “Add Plugins” (Installer)

A LARGE search box to find plugins for installing more easily and way faster.

No clutter. The regular content of the “Featured” tab was removed: not the 6 same old plugin cards cards any longer and no useless tag cloud anymore!

Plus: set the number of displayed plugin cards per page via “Screen Options” tab (on top right corner).

Scratching My Own Itch

As of WordPress 4.0+, going to “Add Plugins” page and being welcomed by always the same old 6 featured plugin cards annoyed me big time! So I thought on how to change this default behavior. Due to WordPress’ genius Hooks & Filter functionality I could easily tweak this via my plugin.

Now it starts with what should have been the default (in my opinion) from the beginning: a large and nice plugin search box – because that’s what I do all the day :). Side benefit: better performance as no external plugin card content has to be loaded!

And there you have it, a one-purpose admin helper plugin aiming at (super) administrators and webmasters searching for and installing plugins from WordPress.org repository on a daily basis.

Video of Plugin Walkthrough plus Demo:

original video link: Screencast by plugin developer David Decker

Benefits & Advantages

• Cleaner, more easy, more useful!
• Improved performance of plugin-install.php admin start page!
• Additional curated topics with list of plugin tags (from WordPress.org) for lots of use cases etc.
• Additional basic integration of “WPCore Plugin Manager” base plugin and service, as well as “WP Favs”.
• Added “Screen Options” tab (on top right corner) to set number of plugin cards per page on a per user basis.
• Tweaked “ZIP Uploader page” – larger file upload field, plus bigger button.
• Search field and plugins number integration for “At a Glance” and “Right Now” (Multisite) Dashboard widgets.
• Optional “Slim Mode” to hide various help texts etc. from the plugin – for power users (see bottom of FAQ page).
• Highly extensible: Additional hooks and filters in place so you could easily tweak my plugin’s output (or add, or remove) if ever needed 🙂
• Lightweight, simple one-purpose plugin. Loads only within /wp-admin/ when and where needed.
• Fully embracing Multisite Network modus, yeah!
• Fully translateable!

Requirements

• WordPress version 4.0 or higher!
• At least capability of install_plugins for your user role (to access the plugin installer page)!

Translations: Internationalization (i18n) / Localization (L10n)

• English (default) – always included
• German (de_DE) – always included
• .pot file (cleaner-plugin-installer.pot) for translators is also always included 🙂
• Easy plugin translation platform with GlotPress tool: Translate “Cleaner Plugin Installer”…

Feedback

• I am open for your suggestions and feedback – Thank you for using or trying out one of my plugins!
• Drop me a line @deckerweb on Twitter
• Or follow me on +David Decker on Google Plus 😉

This Plugin…

• …is Quality Made in Germany
• …was created with love (plus some coffee) on an Ubuntu Linux powered machine 🙂

More

• Also see my other plugins or see my WordPress.org profile page
• Tip: GenesisFinder – Find then create. Your Genesis Framework Search Engine.
• Hey, come & join the Genesis Community on Google+ 🙂

Plugin Links

• WordPress.org Translations Platform
• User support forums
• Code snippets archive for customizing, GitHub Gist

Donate

Enjoy using Cleaner Plugin Installer? Please consider making a small donation to support the project’s continued development.

Translations

• English – default, always included
• German (de_DE): Deutsch – immer dabei! Download auch via deckerweb.de
• For custom and update-secure language files please upload them to /wp-content/languages/cleaner-plugin-installer/ (just create this folder) – This enables you to use fully custom translations that won’t be overridden on plugin updates. Also, complete custom English wording is possible with that as well, just use a language file like cleaner-plugin-installer-en_US.mo/.po to achieve that.

Easy plugin translation platform with GlotPress tool: Translate “Cleaner Plugin Installer”…

Note: All my plugins are internationalized/ translateable by default. This is very important for all users worldwide. So please contribute your language to the plugin to make it even more useful. For translating and validating I recommend the “Poedit Editor”, which works fine on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Idea Behind / Philosophy

As of WordPress 4.0+ the new plugin installer start page was annoying me. By scratching my own itch here I came up with this plugin ;-). I hope you enjoy it as much as I do :).

Credits

• Brady Vercher of Blaser Six, Inc. for contributing the “Screen Options” code for the “Topics” tab – Thank you, Brady!
• Plugin user Mario Bego Garde a.k.a. “pixolin” for helpful feedback to make the plugin even better – Thank you, Bego!
• All users and testers of the plugin, especially all 5-star reviewers – you guys rock!
• Thanks to WordPress Core for the awesome Hooks & Filters system! 🙂
• Thanks to the “Dashicon” (font icon) creators, so I could make the appearance a tiny little bit friendlier.

Last but not least

Special Thanks go out to my family for allowing me to do such spare time projects (aka free plugins) and supporting me in every possible way!

My Other Plugins

• Toolbar Extras for Elementor – WordPress Admin Bar Enhanced
• Builder Template Categories – for WordPress Page Builders
• Polylang Connect for Elementor – Language Switcher & Template Tweaks
• Simple Download Manager for WP Document Revisions
• Genesis What’s New Info
• Genesis Layout Extras
• Genesis Widgetized Not Found & 404
• Genesis Widgetized Footer
• Genesis Widgetized Archive
• Multisite Toolbar Additions