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Bundle Or Not To Bundle WordPress Plugins

I recently came across an article by Alex King regarding the "right way" to
include a plugin into a theme. In it, Alex integrates a plugin called
Social, available here, into a theme they sell called FavePersonal. I
understand they want to provide a great user experience out of the box, but
rather than integrating a plugin, why not just direct their user to install
it from WP.org? You could even use conditional statements to limit certain
functionality till it's installed.

I respect his contributions and commitment to WordPress, but I highly
disagree with the practice of bundling up plugins with themes. Why? To be as
plain as possible about this, it's just not an encouraging practice for the
development ecosystem we are a part of.

Some theme developers today, particularly on marketplaces, tend to go
overboard with this practice . Why does a "theme" really need a contact form
builder, an event management system, an out of the box e-commerce set up, a
custom baked in forum etc.All. At. The. Same. Time.

(To be clear, this is not what Alex is saying or doing.)

There's about a dozen+ plugins that can do all of the above, and much
better, than one developer (or a team) will ever be able too.

Somewhere down the line they lose track of what they were trying to build,
to compete with the developer before and after them. Sadly, some buyers know
not the wiser and buy into it. It's a great financial boost for the
developer in the short term, but a bad precedent for all developers and
designers that are a part of the ecosystem, and coming into it.

I'm not trying to blow Alex's post out of proportion, as he's just talking
about one plugin here. On the other hand, some theme shops like AppThemes do
it right, focusing their themes to do ONE function great (not too hot for
the designs though, sorry guys), others try to sell two things at a time;
Design + Functionality.

I've come up with a list of the Pros and Cons of bundling plugin/s (or more
than necessary functions) into a theme, if you would like to add any please
do so in the comments.

Pros:

Functionality out of the box
Support for all functionality provided by one source
Save time, no need to shop around
Attractive to users/buyers

Cons:

User cannot update design without going through expensive re-design process
Updating plugin/s will be time consuming for users, and developers
More security issues to deal with
Heavy file packages
Bad coding practices could potentially leak in, also a security risk
User may get conflicts if they try to install other plugins
Dependency to solve issues rests on one developer/team

If you have any questions or comments please contact me.

Regards Gerald

Website: http://www.webcraft.ws
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws
Twitter: WebcraftGuru
Facebook: Webcraft Guru


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