I was recently at a session at Wordcamp Boulder and there was a question asked on what a good way to install plugins on multiple blogs. I believe the question was related to the situation where you have Blog A where you have tested and installed a bunch of plugins and you have things working the way you like them and you wish to move all of these same plugins to Blog B which is a new install, or something similar.
I recommend a couple of ways which can save you boatloads of time when installing WordPress Plugins across multiple websites. It just depends on how much work you want to do.
The Plugin Method
If you are a fan of plugins there is a handy one called Plugin Central which was written by the prolific plugin author Vladimir Prelovac. It allows you to basically paste in a list of your plugins from one site and then it will go out find (on WordPress.org), download and install all of them in one click. It’s a pretty nice solution if you want to use a plugin for this.
The down side is that it only works for plugins and needs to be run after
The Template Site Method
If you find that you install WordPress on a lot of different websites, there is another way which I’ve used a fair amount, but it takes a little bit of work to set up once, after that, you are ready to go.
It will provide you with a way to install the exact same Website “template” on as many domains as you would and also includes the WordPress install, any themes and all your favorite plugins.
Build It
Start by gathering up all the files to be included. WordPress install zip, theme and plugins. Just download from WordPress.org or, in the case of custom themes or plugins, from any vendors you purchase add-ons from.
Extract WordPress somewhere like your desktop and open up WordPress folder.
Delete any unwanted stuff. I usually get rid of the default theme and the Hello Dolly plugin (no offense Matt!), just to reduce the amount of files needed to copy (and for security).
Renaming your config-sample.php to config.php now will save you some time later on.
Add your theme to the folder as you would normally by extracting the theme zip into the wordpress/wp-content/themes directory. Do the same for plugins, extracing them into wordpress/wp-content/plugins.
Compress It
Now open up the WordPress folder and highlight all the files and directories and create and add them to a new zip file (or whatever archive you use) named something like wpsite-template.zip.
Be sure to zip the files in the WordPress folder and not the folder itself. This way it allows you to extract the archive of files right into the location it will run from.
Install It
Fire up your FTP program or control panel’s file manager. Upload the archive into the root directory or sub-directory of your web server hosting account.
Now you have your base installation you can use whenever you need to set up a new website. This works well on a shared hosting account where you may decide to add a new site, in which case you create it’s directory, unzip the files there and bam you’ve got your installation done in a few seconds.
Extract it
Locate the file in whatever remote file manager you use, like CPanel or whatever you’re comfortable with and extract the files to wherever you’ve set up the website.
Use It
You still need to create your database, modify the config.php to add your database info, secret keys and database table prefix (you are changing these, right?).
You should also (right now, don’t wait) update your installed files (WP, theme and plugins) to all the latest versions for security reasons. Fortunately, WordPress 3.0 makes it pretty simple to do from a single location in the control panel.
Enjoy Life
Once done you will have an easy way to add your customized sites quickly with almost a single click and will hopefully save time and avoid confusion.
Let me know if you have any suggestions to improve this concept as I’m always looking for ways to save time.
