WordPress developer way of managing plugins on the site with composer.

When ever you get to create a website and then keep it alive for your client, you might not want to give them the ability to deactivate, install or update new plugins. At the same time, you want to have a full control over what gets installed, what version.

Disable plugin update and install scripts:

// Removing plugin controls from admin
function remove_plugin_controls($actions, $plugin_file, $plugin_data, $context){ 

  if (array_key_exists('edit', $actions)) {
    unset($actions['edit']);
  }

  if (array_key_exists('deactivate', $actions)) {
	  unset($actions['deactivate']);
  }

  if (array_key_exists('activate', $actions)) {
    unset($actions['activate']);
  }

  if (array_key_exists('delete', $actions)) {
    unset($actions['delete']);
  }

  return $actions;

}
add_filter('plugin_action_links', 'remove_plugin_controls', 10, 4);

// Remove bulk action options for managing plugins
function disable_bulk_actions($actions){
  if (array_key_exists('deactivate-selected', $actions)) {
    unset($actions['deactivate-selected']);
  }
  if (array_key_exists('activate-selected', $actions)) {
    unset($actions['activate-selected']);
  }
  if (array_key_exists('delete-selected', $actions)) {
    unset($actions['delete-selected']);
  }
  if (array_key_exists('update-selected', $actions)) {
    unset($actions['update-selected']);
  }
}
add_filter('bulk_actions-plugins','disable_bulk_actions');

So we are done. Admin user can not update the plugin on their own without us doing so. But how can we manage the plugin installation? The answer is “Bedrock”.

Bedrock allows you to manage all the plugins through command line interface (cli) using composer.json file.