WP Since plugin
If you’re building or maintaining WordPress plugins, there’s a smart little tool you’ll want in your developer toolkit: WP Since. It’s a free utility that takes the guesswork out of plugin compatibility by automatically checking that your code matches the minimum WordPress version you’ve declared.
Instead of manually hunting through documentation to verify function and hook availability, WP Since does the heavy lifting. It scans your plugin’s PHP files, looks at the core functions, classes, methods, and hooks you’ve used, and then cross-references those with WordPress’s official @since tags. If it spots anything that requires a newer version than the one you’ve declared, it flags it and suggests the correct minimum version.
This means less time double-checking, and more confidence your plugin will play nicely with the versions of WordPress your users are running.
Here’s what WP Since can do for you:
- Automatically scan your plugin for WordPress core features
- Read your plugin’s declared minimum version from
readme.txt - Compare your code against a version map built from core
@sincetags - Highlight compatibility issues and suggest a corrected version
- Support
.distignoreand.gitattributes(export-ignore) to skip test/dev files - Output clear, easy-to-read reports
Upcoming features include GitHub Action integration, HTML/Markdown reporting, and CI/CD-friendly exports — making it a great fit for modern dev workflows.
Getting Started is Simple:
Install with Composer (PHP 7.4+):
composer require --dev eduardovillao/wp-since
Then run:
./vendor/bin/wp-since check ./path-to-your-plugin
You can also configure ignore rules to skip files that aren’t part of your production code.
Why Developers Are Talking About WP Since
The tool got a shoutout on This Week in WordPress #330, where it was highlighted as a great way to future-proof your plugins and avoid nasty surprises during upgrades. As Corey Maass pointed out, it’s not just for plugin authors—site admins could also use it to understand plugin compatibility before updating an older WordPress site.
As Nathan Wrigley noted in the episode, it’s all about automating those checks so you don’t have to dig through the codebase or rely on memory to confirm when features were introduced.
Whether you’re aiming to support legacy versions or just want rock-solid version accuracy, WP Since is a reliable companion for your plugin development journey.
I’ve been building WordPress websites for over a decade, spoken at conferences around the world, and taught countless people how to build and maintain their sites.
I know its a jungle out there finding the right people for website development.
But I’m here to help.
Author Profile – Tony Cosentino
