# When can plugins be installed directly in the admin panel?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic/392235
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [December 27, 2025, 12:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic/392235 "2025-12-27T12:29:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@xu2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/xu2)
#### Post date: [December 27, 2025, 12:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic/392235/1 "2025-12-27T12:29:26Z")
Does the official Discourse team plan to add direct plugin installation from the admin panel in the next version? Like installing themes!
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [December 27, 2025, 2:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic/392235/2 "2025-12-27T14:06:32Z")
I’m afraid this can’t be done via the UI, only via the command-line.
See this guide:
> [@Install plugins on a self-hosted site](https://meta.discourse.org/t/install-plugins-on-a-self-hosted-site/19157):
>
> warning This guide assumes that you have a self-hosted standard installation. We only support the standard method of install here, so these instructions assume you have a [standard install](https://meta.discourse.org/t/142537?silent=true). warning This guide only applies to self-hosted Discourse instances. If you are using a managed hosting service, the available plugins are controlled by your hosting provider. For example, on our hosting [these specific plugins](https://www.discourse.org/plugins) are available by hosting tier. information_source As of mid-2025, [many p…](https://meta.discourse.org/t/373574)
And as far as I know, there are no plans to add this feature in the next version (or ever?). IIRC plugins may need to interact with the database and other stuff in Ruby which is why it cannot be done via the UI.
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### Author:  [@Heliosurge](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heliosurge)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2025, 10:41am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic/392235/3 "2025-12-28T10:41:45Z")
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem likely
There was a #Customization > Plugin that at one time worked not to bad called Procourse Installer. But the author has moved on and it has been broken for years now. Iirc it was working in early v2.x Discourse.
Though really not that bad to install via the server
I haven’t looked into it too much yet but their is a project iirc called Cockpit(?) that will let you run a web UI for Docker installs.
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### Author:  [@stephtara](https://meta.discourse.org/u/stephtara)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2025, 2:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic/392235/4 "2025-12-28T14:20:37Z")
Would definitely be worth it! I can imagine a lot of use cases where the « community admin » is not necessarily the sysadmin.
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2025, 2:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic/392235/5 "2025-12-28T14:49:17Z")
Relatedly (is that even a word?), I believe @pfaffman’s Literate Computing panel has a feature to allow plugins to be installed.
Also see [Rebuild the forum using code?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rebuild-the-forum-using-code/352173) for something quite similar.
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### Author:  [@RGJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RGJ)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2025, 5:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic/392235/6 "2025-12-28T17:14:41Z")
> [@NateDhaliwal](#):
>
> Literate Computing panel has a feature to allow plugins to be installed.
The Communiteq control panel offers something similar on our Professional plan and up 🙂
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### Author:  [@nat](https://meta.discourse.org/u/nat)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2025, 3:13am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic/392235/7 "2025-12-29T03:13:12Z")
A post was merged into an existing topic: [Localizing topic does not seem to localize excerpt pinned on topic list](https://meta.discourse.org/t/localizing-topic-does-not-seem-to-localize-excerpt-pinned-on-topic-list/392232/5)
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### Author:  [@Heliosurge](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heliosurge)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2025, 1:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic/392235/8 "2025-12-29T01:04:13Z")
> [@stephtara](#):
>
> Would definitely be worth it! I can imagine a lot of use cases where the « community admin » is not necessarily the sysadmin.
Things like @RGJ 's dashboard are better than having something like this directly built in. As server side modifications like plugins can provide a much greater security risk. Should an admin account become compromised.
A malicious user could install custom plugin that could cause a lot of issues. So having it either a ssh or offsite dashboard is a much better idea with a seperate account name and login