I often times make a bunch of customizations on plugins I install from the WP repository. Typically the reason I find myself preforming these edits is to fix, rewrite or delete certain functions a plugin might be preforming such as:
- the plugin is automatically inserting a new menu/sub-menus in an undesirable location which I prefer to have standardized in accordance with my organization.
- I simply want to remove, edit or replace text or functions for things such as help links/pages, redundant donation buttons or annoying upgrade promotion dialog boxes.
In end effect the edits I end up preforming are totally unique to each individual plugin and/or its files.
The problem I constantly run into is keeping up to-date with the latest version while manually updating the code for each plugin.
I believe the typical way users deal with this problem is by writing a function which takes priority over the plugins function (correct?). I can understand this approach working fine when the plugin/function I want to edit is simple but some of these plugins are very complex in nature and it seems this might not be the best approach.
What I am really hoping for is a clean method to be able to automatically execute a type of regex "find and replace" on the plugins new source code/files prior to the plugin being updated. I understand this method is in no way bulletproof and plugins/code is always changing however some type of function like this would be very helpful... any suggestions?