WordPress Plugin Update Notification

Nick Momrik4 Comments

Last night I went out searching for plugin updates. I use quite a few plugins at all of my sites, so I wanted to get everything updated. After visiting countless sites, I became frustrated. Most people post about their plugins on their own blogs, but finding some updates is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Today the light bulb went off. WordPress needs a way for plugin users to be notified when there are new versions of plugins. I’ve come up with a couple of ideas.

  • What if there was a central site (maybe there are already plans for the WordPress Plugin Repository) for all of the plugins. Everyone (both plugin users and developers) would have an account on the site. You can download plugins, look at the code, submit bugs, and many other things. Some of these are already available at the Repository. But one thing that the current site doesn’t have is the ability for a user to mark which plugins they use. If users could pick which plugins they use, then the site could mail these users each time a plugin is updated. We’d never have to live with old code again.
  • The second idea may be able to work with the first somehow. If a central site is recognized and used for plugins, a plugin could be created to go through the list of plugins in a WP install. It could then contact the plugin site and compare version numbers. If there is a new version, either email the admin of the WP install, or put a notification in the Dashboard.

These are just a few quick ideas I had today. Not much thought went into it, but I’d be interested in hearing what others have to say. Who knows, maybe Matt already has something up his sleeve.

4 thoughts on “WordPress Plugin Update Notification”

  1. I have the same problem with firefox extensions. At least firefox enables you to autodownload them. However as I want to ensure I have the latest copy on a usb drive (for installation on other machines) I have to find the download sites.

    What I do now is to bookmark each extension homepage into a specified bookmark folder called extensions in my browser and then when a new one comes out I just go to my extension bookmarks folder. If I want to see them all at once, I just open all of them in individual tabs.

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  2. I definitely agree — finding updates to plugins you’re currently using can be be daunting. Sometimes I try to modify someone else’s plugin only to find out that the feature I want was already added right after I downloaded the version I have.

    The current plugin system in WP has the “Plugin URI” field that points to the plugin’s homepage. Unfortunately, some point to an entry on their blog, and fail to update/revise it when they update the plugin, and users never notice the new versions unless they start digging.

    I think we can use RSS for this, for displaying the current version as reported by the plugin writer. Even textfiles can do this. In the plugin file, we can add the field “Current version URI” or something, pointing to myserver.com/project/mypluginversion.txt, which may simply contain “1.5” or the current stable version.

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  4. I had the same idea, in fact, I was searching to see if there was such a plugin and that’s how I found this article. Hopefully WordPress is working on something, with over 20 plugins and growing it takes a full weekend for me to update them all, at least knowing if I need to look for an update would save me some time.

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