Hello,
I am new to WordPress development, moving over from Expression Engine, I am trying to create a skeleton theme for future development and I would love to include the plugin and field types to the default theme (mostly so I can have a pre-configured control panel that I can keep uniform on my sites). My question, is there a way to just have the plugins inside a theme so I can easily drag my theme into a WordPress install and just activate, I am mostly just to keep everything required to make the theme run in one place instead of having to maintain a plugins directory as well as a theme. I would love for someone to point me in the right direction.
Yes it is possible. Take a look here…
http://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/getting-started/including-lite-mode-in-a-plugin-theme/
I tried this approach myself, but as ACF and its plugins are in a constant state of development I find it easier to just maintain and update them separately from my themes. Just my two cents.
