Install plugins + create blueprints w/o filesystem/CLI access

The CMS Questions
1

Hello,
our online marketing team is currently running several Wordpress blogs where they can easily install and test plugins and other features w/o having to bother anyone from IT (unless they messed up).

Is there some method/technique for users loged into the panel to

  • manage plugins (install, enabled/disable)
  • make changes to blueprints
  • edit templates (php)
  • edit/add stylesheets and scripts
    basically reading and writing files to other locations than “content”.

Ages ago I used Joomla! which had a simple textarea field to modify the files from the installed template/theme.

Thanks

2

Fortunately not. And for a good reason.

1 Like
3

My answer above what probably a bit short this morning, let me add some thoughts:

In general, anything but content changes should never be done on a live site, but locally or on some staging site, and changes be tested before they go live. The same is true for plugins, which may or may not be compatible and in most cases require config settings, additional stuff in blueprints etc. And inexperienced user might even install bad plugins that introduce security weaknesses.

If a bad actor gains access to a site via a vulnerable user account, they can easily bring the site down or install bad software if you give them such far-reaching power.

In general, such a feature is a very bad idea and we will certainly never provide such a feature.

Having said that, you can of course extend Kirby to allow all this, at your own risk.

4

Thanks.
I understand the arguments which is why we use containers for each blog and app we maintain and host.

For them not being able to install a plugin or create new content/page types themself from scratch might be a show stopper in the evaluation process… I’m not sure if we can convince them to have some sort of local dev environment and upload changes to the server.
With WP they were all able to work very much on their own and make changes w/o our help or open a support ticket for each change and have us spent time on areas of your websites that are neither our main concern nor relevant for our stream of income.

Hope we can find some arrangement :slight_smile: or maybe try writing an extension or some.

Have a nice weekend.