Getting started

Installing a plugin

Every plugin is a plain WordPress plugin in a zip. There is no account to make, no key to enter and no installer to run.

1. Download the zip from the plugin’s page on this site.
2. In the WordPress admin, open Plugins, then Add New Plugin.
3. Choose Upload Plugin at the top of the screen.
4. Select the zip, then Install Now.
5. Activate.

Activation does not redirect you anywhere and there is no setup wizard. The plugin appears under the Plugin Pantry menu with sensible defaults already saved, and you can leave them alone if they suit you. Every zip is listed on the plugins page, with the size it actually is.

The Plugin Pantry menu

However many Pantry plugins you install, they share one menu item in the admin sidebar, called Plugin Pantry. Whichever plugin loads first creates it; no plugin adds a top-level menu of its own.

Its first screen is the overview: a table of the Pantry plugins installed on the site, each with its contents line, its version and a link straight to its settings. The rest of the menu is one entry per plugin, in the same order as the plugins page on this site. Where a plugin owns a list of things rather than only settings, such as the redirects table or the contact entries, that second screen sits directly under the plugin it belongs to.

Where the settings live

Each plugin has one settings screen under that menu, and its plugin page on this site names it exactly, under Compatibility, as Where it lives. Pantry SEO, for example, is at Plugin Pantry > SEO. A plugin never has a second screen of options: if it grows a second screen it is because it has a list table, not because it has more switches.

Settings are stored in one option per plugin, named pantry_<slug>_settings, so a database export or a migration carries them without any extra work.

Updates

The free plugins are not listed on WordPress.org yet. Until they are, update one by downloading the current zip from its page here and uploading it the same way you installed it: WordPress sees that the plugin is already installed, shows you both versions and asks you to confirm the replacement. Your settings and your data survive it, because they live in the database rather than in the plugin folder.

Once a plugin is listed, updates arrive the ordinary way, on the Plugins screen and under Dashboard, then Updates, alongside everything else on the site. Either way, the plugins never check for an update themselves and never call home to do it.

What the standard promises

Every plugin here is built to one written document, the Pantry Standard, and four of its rules are the ones you will notice.

• No nag. One dismissible notice on first activation at most, and never a sales notice. No banner, no countdown, no greyed-out control that wants a licence. The only mention of Pro inside a free plugin is one plain link in the header of its own settings screen, and that goes when Pro is installed.
• No tracking. No telemetry, no phone-home, no anonymous statistics. A plugin makes no external request at all unless the request is the feature itself, which is why Pantry Mail talks to your SMTP server and nothing else does anything comparable. Every request a plugin makes is printed on its plugin page under the measured footprint.
• Uninstall removes everything. Deleting a plugin runs its uninstall file, which removes every option, transient, scheduled event, post meta key, custom table and custom post type it created. Deactivating removes its scheduled events and leaves your settings alone, so you can switch it off and on again without losing anything.
• The free plugin is the whole plugin. It is not a trial and nothing inside it is switched off waiting for a key. What it does and what it does not do are both published on its plugin page, and the second list is a feature rather than an apology.

Getting help

Bugs, questions and feature requests all go to the same place. The support page says what to include in a report and what to expect back, and the address is team@thepluginpantry.com. If the problem is the site itself rather than a plugin, the team that makes Plugin Pantry, Vorgestern Agency, fixes and rebuilds WordPress sites for clients.

For what a plugin does in detail, read its own page under documentation. For what Pantry Pro adds on top, read the Pantry Pro guide.