Andrés Villarreal

<p><strong>VERY IMPORTANT:</strong> This plugin is deprecated and will not be mantained anymore. Please consider using <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/stage-wp-plugin-manager/" rel="ugc">Stage WP Plugin Manager</a> instead.</p>
<p>If you develop locally, at some point you’ll have some plugins active in your local environment that you don’t need anymore when you deploy your code and database to staging or production. Sure, you can deactivate them before or after deploying, but you’re gonna need them again to be active if you want to perform changes to your code, or update your local database from your remote one. The whole process of activate and deactivate plugins for testing purposes could be really frustrating, and sometimes a complete waste of time.</p>
<p>Is in that kind of situations when the <strong>Environmental Plugin Manager</strong> can be a really helpful friend. Sadly, due to the sentitive work that this plugin performs, it doesn’t work right out of the box, so besides from installing this plugin, you need to do some additional work.</p>
<p><strong>Please read the following instructions very carefully.</strong></p>
<h4>What do I need to make it work?</h4>
<p><strong>The Environmental Plugin Manager works on some assumptions about your workflow:</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>You have a constant named <code>WP_ENV_PLUGINS</code> defined in your WordPress configuration file (often <code>wp-config.php</code>).</li>
<li>The <code>WP_ENV_PLUGINS</code> value is one of the following: <code>development</code>, <code>staging</code>, <code>production</code>.</li>
<li>
<p>The value of <code>WP_ENV_PLUGINS</code> is different in each of your stages. Some developers prefer to keep different configuration files for each one of their environments, or change the values of their constants based on some evaluation. For example, you could have something like this in your <code>wp-config.php</code> file:</p>
<p>if ( file_exists( dirname( <strong>FILE</strong> ) . ‘/development-config.php’ ) ) {     define(‘WP_ENV_PLUGINS’, ‘development’); } elseif ( file_exists( dirname( <strong>FILE</strong> ) . ‘/staging-config.php’ ) ) {     define(‘WP_ENV_PLUGINS’, ‘staging’); } else {     define(‘WP_ENV_PLUGINS’, ‘production’); }</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>If you follow this example, note that <code>development-config.php</code> should not be included in your deployments to staging and production, and both <code>development-config.php</code> and <code>staging-config.php</code> should not exist in your production environment.</p>
<p><strong>These assumptions are not going to change</strong>, so you need to follow this practice in order to use this plugin correctly.</p>
<h4>How do I set up my environment?</h4>
<p>Once you have installed this plugin (my recommendation is to do it first in development), you will notice that a new link appears under each active plugin of the list, which reads “Use for development only” (note that “development” could also be “staging” or “production”, depending on your <code>WP_ENV_PLUGINS</code> constant). Keep that in mind and follow these steps:</p>
<ol>
<li>Activate all the plugins that you need to use for your environment.</li>
<li>Click the “Use for development only” link for all the plugins you want to mark as development-only.</li>
</ol>
<p>Once you click a link, that plugin will be added to the list of plugins that need to be active only in the current environment. You can click the “No more development only” link if you want to remove the plugin from the list.</p>
<h4>How do I reset my environment after a deploy?</h4>
<p>Once you performed a complete deploy (files and database) to a different environment, let’s say from development to staging, you will see that those plugins you selected in development to be active only in that environment are still active. Fear not! This is an intended behavior, as it would be insecure to change the status of the plugins without your knowledge, so you need to do it manually by just clicking the “Reset Plugins Environment (staging)” button that you see in your admin bar. After that, you should see your development-only plugins as not active.</p>
<p>That’s pretty much it. You can test it yourself before deploying by just changing the values of <code>WP_ENV_PLUGINS</code>.</p>
<h4>Auto-reset mode</h4>
<p>If you prefer your environments to be reset automatically, without clicking any button, you can add a second constant to your configuration file, called <code>WP_ENV_PLUGINS_AUTO_RESET</code>, which should be set to <code>true</code>. If you use this method, you won’t see the reset button in the admin bar anymore (instead, it will be replaced by an environment indicator), but keep in mind that the reset process will run every time a page of your site is loaded. It shouldn’t take a lot of resources, though.</p>
<p>If you use the auto-reset process, using this plugin as a <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Must_Use_Plugins" rel="nofollow ugc">must-use</a> will be a lot more effective.</p>
<h4>Will this plugin work on MultiSite installations?</h4>
<p>If you’re using MultiSite, please note that you can activate and deactivate this plugin globally, but you cannot manage plugin environments for the whole network, just for individual sites. Also, this plugin cannot manage network activated plugins. This is in the to-do list, though.</p>
<h4>Contribute</h4>
<p>You can make suggestions and submit your own modifications to this plugin on <a href="https://github.com/andrezrv/environmental-plugin-manager" rel="nofollow ugc">Github</a>.</p>


Environmental Plugin Manager

Gives you the option to define which plugins must be active for a particular environment only.

nwells

<p>Too many plugins installed to do basic things? This plugin tries to bring some common ones into one plugin to make life that little bit easier.</p>
<p><strong>Current functionality</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Identify the production URL so as to apply specific logic or hooks depending on which environment the site is in</li>
<li>Block visitors to the staging site based on IP or by using a specific cookie – great for showing clients but not the world</li>
<li>Find & replace functionality – great for changing from a staging URL to a production URL</li>
<li>Auto 301 redirect to the site domain for WordPress – useful to ensure everyone is using the correct path i.e. with www (or not) and https (or not)</li>
<li>Add additional classes to the main body tag to easily target device and operating system i.e. iOS, Android, Chrome, etc…</li>
<li>Sitemap generator to display a list of pages (or any post type) on the site as well as offering the ability to exclude pages</li>
<li>WooCommerce settings to disable categories list on single product page, remove reviews tab, remove product count on categories</li>
<li>When using Visual Composer you can automatically load in any PHP files that make use of vc_map() within your theme</li>
<li>When using Gravity Forms & Bootstrap all correct classes will be applied to input boxes and buttons. Also, a new field type is added to add columns to forms as well as placing the submit button wherever you like</li>
<li>Gravity Forms confirmation message appear underneath any fixed header when using AJAX. This hook allows you to scroll to the correct position based on the header</li>
<li>Can specify a stylesheet that you want to appear last in the enqueue – useful for overwriting parent themes or other plugins</li>
<li>YouTube embedded videos can have the title, related videos, and controls switched off</li>
<li>Change the sender name and email address for emails sent</li>
<li>Short code for displaying the current year – useful for keeping copyright notices up-to-date</li>
<li>WooCommerce template tweaks for improved usability when using the Jupiter theme</li>
<li>Set parent hierarchy pages as place holders so they don’t provide links in menus to empty pages</li>
<li>Simple short code for the current page title – useful to add in to links</li>
<li>Disable certain notifications for admin</li>
<li>Added Relevanssi support for XforWooCommerce filter plugin when AJAX is in use</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Coming soon</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Drag & drop page re-ordering</li>
<li>Improve noindexing on WooCommerce hidden products as well as ensuring the don’t appear in sitemaps both HTML & XML</li>
<li>Auto hide a page from any menu when its status is no longer published</li>
<li>Additional default settings for Visual Composer to make it easier to extend and remove built in elements & templates</li>
<li>More to come!</li>
</ul>


Apex Digital Toolbox

Too many plugins installed to do basic things? Bring some common functions ones into one plugin to make life that little bit easier for developers.

Environmental Plugin Manager vs Apex Digital Toolbox