If you have used WordPress CMS for even a short period of time, you probably encounter the directory "mu-plugins"? At first I didn't bother asking myself what it is for but thanks to the post of Greg Rickaby, I was enlightened of its purpose. It wasn't just a decoration; it was there for a reason.
What is MU Plugins?
MU plugins stands for "Must Use" plugins. These are plugins installed in a specified directory, in this case it’s the mu-plugins directory as the default under the wp-content directory.These plugins are enabled automatically on all sites in the installation. It doesn’t show in the list of plugins in the admin plugin’s page – it does have a section called Must-Use section and cannot be disabled unless you remove the plugin file in the must-use directory.
You can change the default directory by setting the WPMU_PLUGIN_DIR and WPMU_PLUGIN_URL in wp-config.php.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- MU plugins are always enable, no need to activate via admin and cannot be disable by accident.
- Can be enabled simply by uploading the plugin file in the mu-plugins directory.
Cons
- MU plugins cannot be updated via admin dashboard. It doesn’t show you notifications of updates.
- Activation hooks are not executed in plugins added in the mu-plugins directory.
- WP only looks for PHP files right inside the mu-plugins directory, meaning, if you have a plugin called “My Awesome Plugin” and you put it inside a directory (so you can organized the plugin files) called “my-awesome-plugin”, you need to have a loader php file that will call load “my-awesome-plugin”.
If you have “load.php” file directly under the mu-plugins directory. Your code might be;
require WPMU_PLUGIN_DIR. ‘/my-awesome-plugin/ my-awesome-plugin.php’;
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