Update
------
Today I use a shell loop with [wp-cli](
[To see links please register here]
) to install and [activate](
[To see links please register here]
) the plugins
Original Answer
================
For activating, I use some variant of this. suppose I had three plugins i wanted to activate ("cforms", "w3-total-cache", "wordpress-seo"). The convention is that their directory and plugin .php file are the same name:
$wordpress_path = "/path/to/my/wordpress/install";
require_once( $wordpress_path . "/wp-load.php" ); //not sure if this line is needed
//activate_plugin() is here:
require_once( $wordpress_path . "/wp-admin/includes/plugin.php");
$plugins = array("cforms", "w3-total-cache", "wordpress-seo");
foreach ($plugins as $plugin){
$plugin_path = $wordpress_path."wp-content/plugins/{$plugin}.php";
activate_plugin($plugin_path);
}