Make plugins theme-sensitive?

In your theme, you should have a file called functions.php. I think you can put any plugins you want to work with your theme in that file. If you look at the Kurbic theme, you’ll see functions and that’s how Kurbic allows you the modify the header colors.

So try putting that plugin (all the PHP of it) inside functions.php. I hope that works.

Thanks for the tip tsguitar, but my advice is to NOT try the idea he described above. I did, and have develop some strange quirks when trying to create or edit posts from the dashboard.

Are you sure it’s not a problem with the plugins or some missing code? I’m not sure if you’ll need to edit the plugins when you do it, but functions.php is the place to put additional, well, functions for your theme.

Can you list some themes that have plugins included with them? I can take a look at how those ones do it and get back to you.

Hi I built a theme for myself recently. It’s having a functions.php and inside of it includes various other files residing inside the themes subfolder. It also contains some plugins and works like a charm (with WP 2.0.2 and WP 2.0.4).

The only caveat with this method is, that you can not turn the plugin on/off in the plugin admin panel. It’s just on when you are activating the plugin.

This method may also fail if the plugin code assumes it is residing in WPs plugins folder. Maybe that’s the case with your issue?

Maybe I should deactivate the plugin from the dashboard first (?). Or delete it totally from the plugins folder, before trying to add it to the theme functions file (?).

How would I use the plugins features if it’s not in the WP options pages?

If you have the plugin activated in the admin panel AND put it into the theme, then you end up including the code two times. If the code is not prepared for this, it will generate a horrible amount of PHP errors.

With this method you can not activate/deactivate plugins that are stored in the themes folder. They are just switched on when you are activating the theme. This is not your usually known WP plugin mechanism!

As long as I don’t kill the whole blog, I think I’ll give it another go.

Looking at that custom query string plugin, I’d say you got lucky. It’s written as a single class. ??

Down at the bottom of the plugin, you’ll find a line that reads:
$cqs = new cqs();

Remove that. Then add this to the functions.php of your theme:
function themename_load_cqs_plugin()
{
global $cqs;
if (class_exists('cqs'))
$cqs = new cqs();
}
add_action('plugins_loaded','themename_load_cqs_plugin');


That should do the trick. You can leave the plugin in the plugins folder after doing this. Activating and deactivating the plugin via the plugins menu will continue to work properly as well.

OK- Otto, thanks for the reply. I’m getting an error:

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at .../evilkirk/wp-content/themes/kirkian/functions.php:6) in .../evilkirk/wp-admin/plugins.php on line 16

And I’m not exactly sure how this set-up will work in only one theme, but I can’t seem to test it as I can’t see the CQS options in the dashboard at this point.

The above error (which I probably didn’t need to post as ‘code’) is happening in the dashboard when I have my test theme active. CQS options do not show whatever theme is active…

An idea: Modifying the CQS plugin itself to give it a ‘theme’ condition? It would have to be set up to give you the ability to set sub-conditions after the theme condition, I think.

I don’t think this is something I can actually do, however. I don’t know enough to be dangerous, I know enough to be very dangerous.

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at …/evilkirk/wp-content/themes/kirkian/functions.php:6) in …/evilkirk/wp-admin/plugins.php on line 16

The functions.php file should *never* make any output. You have written it incorrectly. Either you have it doing an echo of some kind, or you have empty space outside of the <?php … ?> tags, or something.

Modify the file to not produce any output and this error will go away.

I retried the functions thing as a you said, being careful of spaces and format, and now the dashboard errors are gone. But CQS options are still nowhere to be found. I even tried setting up the options before I changed the functions.php (and the line in the plugin), but no go. It just doesn’t seem to want to do it.

Maybe if I tried working with the loop again…

Well, I couldn’t get this worked out. A plug-in that makes plug-ins sensitive to what theme is in use might be helpful, but there just may not be enough need for it. Although not resolved, I would call this issue closed.

Thanks for everyone’s ideas.