WordPress Plesk Application Package
Let’s state the obvious; WordPress is awesome. And Plesk is awesome. They both seem to work so well together. Plesk also has the ability to install web applications much like Fantastico or Simple Scripts does in cPanel. This saves time. Lots of time. WordPress has evolved into an elegant platform that can handle almost any type of website imaginable. With the advent of Buddypress, Members, PODs CMS, and Search Engine just to name a few of the 8,700+ available WordPress plugins, a high degree of functionality is at the fingertips of web developers. This saves time as well.
The bottom line is that better tools save us more time. In an industry with extremely low overhead, our time is the most valuable thing we as web developers can offer. Time and knowledge is what our clients pay us for. That being said we need to capitalize on both.
Being that WordPress and its array of plugins are constantly changing and being updated we need a way to quickly install WordPress AND the plugins of our choice with a few clicks. Manually creating a database and uploading files takes too long. However Plesk’s application packages are not always up to date. So how can we accomplish this and better capitalize on our time? Simple – we create an updated version of an existing Plesk package.
Let’s proceed.
Creating the Plesk Application Package
Get the initial application package. Lets fly over to apsstandard.org and download the most current WordPress application package. This file must be opened with a standard ZIP extracting program. Upon opening the file we see that the directory structure is very simple. All we’ll be worrying about is the htdocs folder. This folder houses all the content that will be installed on the server. You will notice immediately that the files listed resemble a pretty standard WordPress installation.
Copy all your plugins to the WordPress plugins folder. Yes. Its really that simple. If you use 7-Zip like me you’ll be able to simply drag and drop the files of your choice to the /wp-content/plugins folder and the archive will automatically rebuild itself.
Uploading the Plesk Application Package
This is where everything comes together. Follow to steps below and refer to the appropriate images for guidance. Also please notes that this procedure was done in Plesk 8.6.0.
1. Click on Server
2. Click Application Vault
3. Click on Add New Application Distribution Package
4. Select the our newly created application package
After the application loads you’ll see a newly created WordPress Package under the other category. Be patient while uploading as this will take a few minutes. Once its done, you’re done! If you need help installing a web application, refer to planetsmb.com’s article on this.
See NEWD’s Application Package
This is our most current application package. We do use several premium plugins that I have removed but there are enough resources to keep one occupied and clearly illustrate the benefits.
Download Plesk Application Package
Leave a Reply
