This post is part of the ClassicPress Plugin Development series in which I am going to look at both best practice for developing plugins and how I approach some requirements as well as some of the functions I commonly use.
WordPress manages plugin updates via the Plugin Repository; ClassicPress are building a plugin directory, but the version which will allow updates to be pushed is some time away. To close this functionality gap, there is a plugin available which allows plugin developers to host their own update site and push updates out for their plugins.
This plugin is the Update Manager plugin from Code Potent. I have integrated this into all of my publicly available plugins so any time I release a new version this is pushed out to all users.
There is a full documentation set available from Code Potent.
The process of creating an update server is quite easy and you can use an existing ClassicPress site if you want. I opted to create a new site rather than adding to an existing one, but the process is no different.
Download the latest Update Manager version and using the Add Plugins page upload the download Update Manager zip and activate the plugin.
Your update server is now up and running; the next step is to add the Update Manager client to your plugin, which I will be covering in the next post.