wp-load Without Loading the plugins

Question

I am building a 'control panel', for my server and would like to use my Wordpress userbase to control the login functionality, as well as be able to show some posts.

I have set some defines and included wp-load:

define( 'COOKIE_DOMAIN', false );
define( 'DISABLE_WP_CRON', true );
define( 'WP_USE_THEMES', false );
define( 'WP_CACHE', false );
// define( 'SHORTINIT', true );
include( '/home/getyou/www/wp-load.php' );

With shortinit defined, I am able to utilize some of the functionality, however the user functionality fails, without it, I notice my w3 Total Cache is caching everything.

Is there a way I can continue to use all of the wordpress functionality, but possibly unload or disable w3 total cache for this external site?

EDIT

Added a mu-plugin with the following code to disable all plugins based on defining MEDINIT

if ( defined( 'MEDINIT ') && MEDINIT ) {
    add_filter( 'option_active_plugins', function ( $plugins ) {
        $plug_arr = get_plugins();
        foreach( $plug_arr as $k => $v){
            unset( $plugins[$k] );
        }
        return $plugins;
    } );
}

However, when I call var_dump( get_option('active_plugins') ); it still loads all plugins.

Answer 1

You would need to put something like this in a .php file of any name in your must-use plugins folder (/wp-content/mu-plugins/) so that it loads before all plugins so you can use it to filter the plugin loading...

<?php 
if (defined('SHORTINIT') && SHORTINIT) {
    add_filter('option_active_plugins', 'shortinit_plugins_filter');
    function shortinit_plugins_filter($plugins) {
        $noloadplugins = array('w3-total-cache');
        foreach ($plugins as $i => $plugin) {
             if (in_array($plugin, $noloadplugins)) {unset($plugins[$i]);}
        }
        return $plugins;
    }
}

Alternatively manually include whatever function files you need to make things work as they should.

UPDATE for Multisite

You would need to use a different filter on multisite, something like this should work, eg. for blog ID 2...

<?php 
if (defined('SHORTINIT') && SHORTINIT) {
    add_filter('site_option_active_plugins', 'shortinit_site_plugins_filter', 10, 3);
    function shortinit_site_plugins_filter($plugins, $option, $network_id) {
        if ($network_id == 2) {
            $noloadplugins = array('w3-total-cache');
            foreach ($plugins as $i => $plugin) {
                 if (in_array($plugin, $noloadplugins)) {unset($plugins[$i]);}
            }
        }
        return $plugins;
    }
}

Note if wanted to change sitewide activated plugins you would need to do further filtering of the network wide active plugins, something like:

<?php 
if (defined('SHORTINIT') && SHORTINIT) {
    add_filter('option_active_sitewide_plugins', 'shortinit_network_plugins_filter');
    function shortinit_network_plugins_filter($plugins) {
        if (get_current_blog() == 2) {
            $noloadplugins = array('w3-total-cache');
            foreach ($plugins as $i => $plugin) {
                 if (in_array($plugin, $noloadplugins)) {unset($plugins[$i]);}
            }
        }
        return $plugins;
    }
}