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manifest / updates / chips-plugin-manager

CHIPS Plugin Manager

Installs and updates CHIPS utility plugins on client WordPress sites from their public GitHub repositories

by CHIPS · github.com/danielshields/chips-plugin-manager

★ 0stars

Install

Download source zip No release zip yet

This is the repository archive. It installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow.

Install straight from GitHub with WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/danielshields/chips-plugin-manager/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
Updates itself. It ships its own updater, so new versions appear under Dashboard → Updates.
Readme github.com/danielshields/chips-plugin-manager ↗

Installs and updates the CHIPS WordPress utility plugins on client sites, straight from their public GitHub repositories.

Once it's active, the plugins it manages behave like any other plugin: updates show up on Plugins, on Dashboard → Updates, and in wp plugin update. The dedicated screen at Plugins → CHIPS Plugins adds install/activate buttons and a manual "check GitHub now".

Adding a plugin

Edit plugins.json in this repo and commit to main. Client sites re-read it within six hours — no need to update this plugin on each site.

{
  "slug": "chips-wp_rte-input",
  "repo": "danielshields/chips-wp_rte-input",
  "main_file": "chips-rte-input.php",
  "branch": "main",
  "name": "CHIPS – Text Input with Format",
  "description": "…",
  "icon": "icon-256x256.png",
  "requires_plugins": ["advanced-custom-fields-pro"]
}
Field Required Notes
repo yes owner/name. Must be public.
slug no The folder the plugin installs into. Defaults to the repo name. Set this when a site already has the plugin under a different folder name — changing it later orphans the existing install.
main_file no Primary PHP file inside that folder. Defaults to {repo-name}.php. Set it whenever the file isn't named after the repo — chips-wp_rte-input holds chips-rte-input.php, not chips-wp_rte-input.php.
branch no Defaults to main.
icon no Path in the repo to an image, shown on the updates screen.
requires_plugins no Folder names of plugins that should be active. Shown as a note; not enforced.

Getting slug or main_file wrong is the main way this goes sideways: the plugin's identity to WordPress is {slug}/{main_file}, and if that doesn't match what's on the site, the update lands as a second plugin instead.

How updating works

Versions come from the Version: header of main_file on the tracked branch, read over raw.githubusercontent.com (no API rate limit, ~8 KB per check via a Range request). Anything higher than the installed version is offered as an update; the download is the branch archive.

Every push to main that bumps the version header becomes an update offer on every client site, within the six-hour cache. There's no staging step, so treat a version bump as the publish action — commit freely, bump deliberately.

Results are cached for six hours (30 minutes after a failed lookup). The "Check GitHub for updates" button clears all of it.

Two things it handles that a naive updater doesn't

  • Folder renaming. A GitHub archive unpacks to {repo}-{branch}, e.g. chips-wp_rte-input-main. Installed as-is, WordPress treats that as a different plugin from chips-wp_rte-input — you get a duplicate and the original stays at the old version. upgrader_source_selection renames the unpacked folder to the declared slug first. The CHIPS Plugins screen also flags stray -main folders left behind by a previous updater.
  • Filter ordering. ACF and WP Migrate DB Pro both rebuild the site_transient_update_plugins object at the default priority, discarding entries added before them. Updates are injected at PHP_INT_MAX so they survive.

Updates use bulk_upgrade() rather than upgrade(), because the single-plugin path deactivates the plugin before upgrading and never turns it back on.

Requirements and limits

  • Public repositories only — no token is stored on client sites.
  • Tested on single-site WordPress. Multisite isn't tested; the version cache index uses update_option, which is per-site.
  • Version comparison is version_compare(), so headers should be numeric and increasing. 1.00 works but 1.0.0 is friendlier.

Overriding per site

// Track a branch on one site only.
add_filter( 'chips_pm_manifest', function ( $plugins ) {
    if ( isset( $plugins['chips-duplicator'] ) ) {
        $plugins['chips-duplicator']['branch'] = 'staging';
    }
    return $plugins;
} );

// Point at a different manifest entirely.
add_filter( 'chips_pm_manifest_url', fn() => 'https://example.com/plugins.json' );

Local development

./sync-to-sandbox.sh copies this plugin into ~/Websites/afam-sandbox (real files, not a symlink, so self-update behaves as it will in production).