I use WordPress for several sites, so I’m always on the lookout for good plugins. I stumbled upon two today that could make all of our lives a little bit easier.

The first, is not really a plugin. It’s more of a script. What it does is make it insanely easy to install WordPress. One of the bottlenecks for WordPress installation is the FTPing of all the WordPress files to your server. EasyWP WordPress Installer (hat tip: DazzlinDonna) is one little file. You upload it to your server and then run the script. The script takes care of the rest and prompts you with a webform for the info that you would normally put into a wp-config file. Sounds easy.
At this point, I haven’t tested this, but it really does seem to be that easy. The only caveat that I see so far is the security of the files that it’s downloading to do the install. I’m assuming that it’s pulling the file directly from the WordPress repository, but even so, some caution will still be required.

The second plugin really is a plugin.  It’s called the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin.  Wanna guess what it does?  There are a couple of programs out there that will automatically upgrade your WordPress install.  This one seems to be a good one.  It automatically backs up  your files, and backs up your database.  It then ftps the zip file from the WordPress repository and unzips it.  It then gives you the link to the upgrade page.  Oh, and it deactivates all your active plugins and then remembers which ones were on so it can reactivate them when it’s done.  It also has a feature to do all of it completely automatic with no prompts.  Pretty cool huh?

I’m sure I’ll find a good excuse to test these two out over the next week or so.  The auto upgrade one should come in really handy for a few sites that are using WordPress as a CMS and don’t get the attention that they deserve on the backend.  And the install one should come in very handy for another project that I’m thinking about.

Anyone else tried either of these out?  Or have others that are cooler?