Have you ever noticed that WordPress.org plugins folder names never change? For example Yoast SEO is under a folder called wordpress-seo while Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights is within google-analytics-for-wordpress. While plugin names can change the folder names are unchangeable.
These persistent folders, also called plugin slugs, are used in two places. First on WordPress.org at https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/, and within your local WordPress installation at /wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/. This is what WordPress uses internally to autoupdate the correct plugin.
Extracting plugin slugs with javascript
While on the plugin screen you extract a full list of plugin slugs using a few lines of javascript within Google Chrome console.
plugins = [];
jQuery('#the-list tr.active').each(function() {
plugin = jQuery(this).data('plugin');
folder = plugin.split("/");
folder = folder[0];
plugins.push(folder);
});
plugins.join(" ");Having a single list of plugin slugs can be used with wp-cli to quickly reinstall on another installation. While this will only work for any free plugins on WordPress.org, I still find this useful and saves some time uploading plugins over FTP.
