Plug-in Manager

I have written before about the Movable Type plug-ins I use for this site; at this moment I am using seven different plug-ins. The more plug-ins you use, the more difficult it becomes to maintain the site. Because once in a while new versions appear, and I don't want to scan seven (eight if you include MT itself) sites to see if updates are available.

But now there is the MT Plug-ins Manager. I downloaded the files, placed them on the server and fired up the page. A neat list with all available plug-ins appeared.

Since I didn't install my plug-ins with this tool, the plug-in manager did not know yet which plug-ins I already have installed. So I went to the Manual Registration section, where I could specify the version number and plug-in name of each file in my plugins directory. After entering these details I went back to my main page, and noticed an update button next to the IfEmpty plug-in. I was using version 1.1, while the latest version is 1.11. I clicked the button, waited some seconds and my plug-in was updated. This is great!!! No more downloading from different sites, unzipping, FTP-ing,... One click on the button does the job.