WP Plugin Packer - In the past few weeks (on my free time), I developed an interesting idea of mine into a WordPress plugin called.

The concept is simple: I wanted to group together WordPress plugins, and import/export them to other WordPress websites.
I also wanted to have them in packs for the sake of order, so I could easily disable a bunch of related plugins all at once.

Current Features:

• Arrange Plugins inside Packs (basically groups) - to better categorize your WordPress plugins.
• Enable/Disable entire Packs - especially good if you have different plugins that are dependent on each other.
• Import/Export Packs - you can export multiple packs, single plugins, several plugins, and import it into another WordPress installation.
• Indication if the imported plugins are not installed - if you import Packs that include plugins that don't exist in your WP website, WP Plugin Packer will give you a notification with a link to install them.

The export format is a simple JSON file, incredibly simple to understand.
Currently, if you're importing plugins that don't exist on your local WordPress website, it will simply show you a notification with a link to the plugin installation.
I tried to have the plugins install automatically in case they don't exist (thus making the import process a single-step process), but I ran into some issues with the WordPress.org Plugin API.

There were a few problems - the plugins slugs on the WordPress.org website don't necessarily match the local slugs (which is quite problematic), and on top of that - the way WordPress plugins are installed is still too cumbersome, complex, and will likely change in the near future.

There is also the issue of plugins that are not on WordPress.org.
This is a growing trend because of WordPress.org's strict approval process & the fact that they still use SVN for their plugin repository (what's up with that?!).

More and more WordPress plugins are moving to GitHub, there is even a tool - GitHub Updater, that lets you update your plugins directly from GitHub.
This is a pretty good idea, but it mainly shows that the automatic plugin installation process is far from being a stable option, so I settled with giving the user a link to install the missing plugins manually.

Some Screenshots:

2 Plugin Packs, the Image Galleries plugins are missing (which is why they have a red background & there's a warning on top with links to install those plugins).

 

2 Plugin Packs - Basic Stuff & Social Media.

 

I'm looking forward for some feedback on this, accepting issues/feature requests in the GitHub repository: https://github.com/AZdv/wp-plugin-packer/issues