The 7.0.1 update brings up a question I have always had. How does everyone else deal with all of your custom plug-ins, shaders, etc. when updating? Do you just dig through the folder of the older version and copy the files? or does anyone have a more elegant solution?
_mike
As long as they’re UB compatible, I just take the newest plug-ins/shaders can copy them over into a copy of the older plugin/shaders folder to and then replace all the older versions with the new stuff from the current installation. Then take that copy of the old folder (with new updates) and use it as your new sockets folder. It should now contain a copy of all your custom purchased plugins, plus updates of all the latest stuff.
What I’d really wish EI would do would be to support folders in the plugin menu to help classify different types of plugins. Either that or preferences to assign or route plugins to a specific folder as defined by the user.
I was just about to test using folders to see if that worked, but you answered that already.
Your solution seems pretty straight foward, but overall I agree, some simple modifications to the app would certainly simplify things a lot. I vote for the ability to designate a folder to use for “custom” or “3rd party” plug-ins. It would also be cool if the “Plugin” menu could have sub-menus based on folders in the OS. That way we could organize plugins into meaningful groups.
_mike
I actually do it the other way around. I just copy the contents of the old folder to the new one and when the OS askes to replace the existing files I hit “no”. That way only the things that are missing in the new folder are copied, the new versions stay.
Atually you indeed can make sub folders in the plugin folder. Each folder will be treated as a sub menu in the plugin menu within Animator. I do that all the time.
Jens
I use to put sub folders into the shaders plugins folder, but I stopped after EI would crash often if I tried to open a project where I had left the Shader Palette visible.
This might have been fixed, but I still avoid doing it.
Robert
Hi Jens,
Same difference. 
When I copy the contents of the new socket folder into the old one, I say replace all duplicates. We’re basically doing the same thing. As for folders in sockets folder, I could never get that to work. The folders would show up in the drop down menu, which was nice, but then I’d get crashes and plugin not found errors. Maybe its fixed in v7.
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