I'm in favor going forward of using sites/all/plugins for third party plugins. First, it's a centralized location, and the convention is being adopted throughout contrib, and even core (http://drupal.org/node/315100). Secondly, as you note, it discourages the practice of directly modifying a module directory structure. Thirdly, it allows for drupal_get_path('plugins', 'foo'), if a foo.info file exists (i.e., /sites/all/plugins/foo/foo.info). Aaron Simon Hobbs wrote:
Hiya
Is there best practice for 3rd party plugins?
Recently a tiny site was upgraded, the fckeditor module was updated but the dev didn't re-add fckeditor. The owner didn't notice for ages and eventually I have to work backwards through backups to make sure I get the right (possibly customized) package.
So I've started creating a sites/all/plugins folder for all the fckeditors / swfobject / jqueryplugins / pdfwriters / etc that I need for a job. I then use symlinks, so in the scramble the fix is simple.
It's nice too I can put different versions of tools side by side, and the symlink just points to the desired one.
In theory it would be great if modules expected a plugin folder.
For non-professionals we put them under duress with install instructions that tell them to clutter their modules with plugins, making upgrades harder for them, and I think we send the message that altering modules is ok.
Thoughts or guidance?
Thanks Simon Hobbs / sime
-- Aaron Winborn Advomatic, LLC http://advomatic.com/ Drupal Multimedia available in September! http://www.packtpub.com/create-multimedia-website-with-drupal/book My blog: http://aaronwinborn.com/