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Hi community
I've been installing Turnkey WordPress quite a few times now for development in a HyperV enviroment, and in august I expect to enter production as it apears to work just great :)
One thing has bevildered me though. Every time I've installed Turnkey WordPress, my FIRST task is to REMOVE all the 14 bundled plugins. One by one, otherwise it fails. That's SORT of ok, but not as good if unnecessary plugins weren't installed in the first place.
1) In my experience, many plugins fails to pick up their leftover files, and database tables, and settings when they are kicked out.
2) Furthermore, some plugins do NOT work 100% if installed and activated under a different domain than the one they end up running on. These pluigins shoud first be installed and activated, once the site is migrated to its production domain name.
3) Thirdly, the chances my WordPress site needs EXACTLY the 14 bundled plugins is ZERO%... And my guess is, that that counts for everyone else. Not EVERY WordPress features "podcasting". Actually, the ONLY bundled plugin I use, is SEO by Yoast. AND - thats's one example of a plugin that has nothing to do on a development site.. Aaand what do you think is easiest. To install 1 plugin, or to remove 13?
4) Finally. EVERY SINGLE ONE of the plugins has been updated since the latest TurnKey WordPress distribution (ok that's a guess, haven't verified it, but is likely true) - meaning, that the bundled plugins are outdated and has to be updated anyway!.
I really suggest you consider, creating a lean, prestine, faster, smaller, untouched Turnkey WordPress next time. And should you really want to promote the recommended plugins, by all means, just list them on the default page on the new site with a link to the wordpress plugin repository - no harm done there.
I hope this is only taken as a honest suggestion to improve Turnkey WordPress. I'm very grateful for the work you guys have put into this distribution, its helps me out a lot!
Bjarne
Great feedback, thanks!
You raise some really good points. And what you say makes a fair bit of sense. So I've summarised it into a "feature request" on our issue tracker.
Considering that the WordPress appliance is one of our most popular and no one else has come forward with your feedback I'm not sure how common it is? Having said that, I imagine that most of our WordPress users only set up a single WordPress instance so probably only have to go through the process of "cleaning up" superfluous plugins once. And perhaps many others share your pain but just haven't bothered to let us know.
In some respects, I think that most of the plugins add value (although I admit that the podcast one is pretty tenuous - and should probably be removed). I think that the plugins that we have selected add particular value for newbs as there are a ton of pretty flakey plugins. We haven't audited all the plugin code (and haven't rechecked for a while) but we did make a fair bit of effort to select the best ones that we could find to make WordPress "complete".
But perhaps it doesn't need to be an "all or nothing" approach? Your suggestion of linking to them on the default page is a great idea. It provides the "leg up" to newbs, without the need for more advanced users (who know exactly what they want) to remove a ton of stuff (which as you point out may not even remove cleanly).
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