A custom update checker for WordPress plugins. Useful if you can't or don't want to host your plugin in the official WP plugin repository, but would still like it to support automatic plugin updates.

Adaptated from YahnisElsts / plugin-update-checker, main changes:

• Debug mode (and files) have been removed, thus reducing everything to 2 files (the updater class and the JSON).
• Classes renamed so as to not being confused with the originals.
• Sample data adapted to work with GitHub^* hosted plugins.

^{* When dealing with GitHub updates there are some specifics that have to been take care of. Specially because of the -master suffix. For usage in other update platforms, refer to the original.}

###Demo mode This demo plugin will always ask for an update. As the plugin header says Version 2013.10.15, and the meta file says 2013.10.16. Take special attention for the use of the prefix -master.

###Adding the class and instantiating a new updater I've created a helper class to dispatch our self-updating repo, the main plugin file is just a wrapper and instantiates the helper, which in turn instantiates the Updater class. Check the documentation of the original plugin.

include_once 'inc/plugin-update-dispatch.php';
new B5F_General_Updater_and_Plugin_Love(array( 
    'repo' => 'github-plugin-update-checker', 
    'user' => 'brasofilo',
    'plugin_file' => plugin_basename( __FILE__ ),
    'donate_text' => 'Buy me a beer',
    'donate_icon' => '♥ ',
    'donate_link' => 'https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=JNJXKWBYM9JP6&lc=US&item_name=Rodolfo%20Buaiz&item_number=Plugin%20donation&currency_code=EUR&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donate_LG%2egif%3aNonHosted'
));	

###Renamer hook Workaround to remove the suffix "-master" from the unzipped directory after upgrading

add_filter( 'upgrader_source_selection', array( $this, 'rename_github_zip' ), 1, 3 );

###Update configuration file The JSON file consists of (check the available fields ):

{
    "name" : "Plugin Name",
    "slug" : "plugin-slug-master",
    "download_url" : "https://github.com/username/plugin-slug/archive/master.zip",
    "version" : "0.1",
    "author" : "Author Name",
    "author_homepage" : "http://example.com",
    "homepage" : "https://github.com/username/plugin-slug",
    "tested" : "3.6",
    "sections" : {
        "description" : "Update plugins from GitHub hosted repositories.",
        "changelog" : "<p><ul><li><strong>0.1</strong><p>Plugin launched.</p></li></ul>"
    },
    "upgrade_notice" : "Version 0.2 Plugin fake upgrade.",
    "last_updated" : "2013-10-09"
}