WordPress Version Check

What it does

The aim of the plugin is to help people keep up to date with new wordpress version releases. (For more info see the original plugin announcement.)

How it works

The plugin takes a simple approach to get the users attention. Once activated it checks an XML-RPC webservice for update news displaying a message at the top of every page in the wordpress admin user-interface. It will check for an update to the message every 15 mins with an additional check being kicked off if the installed wordpress version changes so as to give instant feedback on upgrades.

Possible Changes/Known Issues

The following changes have been suggested for implementationbefore the plugin hits version 1.0:

  • When you’re using the latest version, just show a dim grey “up-to-date” line.
    • Version 0.80 does this as standard.
  • wp_version_check() Template Tag.
  • Optional email sent when new message detected to help track the many installs supported by some people for friends
    • Version 0.90 has this functionality
  • Hello Dolly incompatible – As this plugin uses the same piece of screen real estate as Hello Dolly you can’t run both at the same time.
  • …. your suggestion here ….

The following bugs have been identified:

  • Hard to see the message when using the Tiger Admin UI Plugin.
    • In Version 0.80 Tiger Admin UI plugin is now detected and alternative css is delivered for the Tiger Admin.
    • In Version 0.90 MarkJ’s improved css is delivered for the Tiger Admin.
  • Plugin contacts the service every 15mins when the blog is viewed rather than every 15mins when the admin pages are viewed.
    • Fixed in version 0.80 does this as standard.
  • XML-RPC Error codes are not reported properly
    • Fixed in version 0.91

Download

The latest version of the plugin may be downloaded here: pjw_wp_version_monitor.1.00.zip

Examples

To see examples of the plugin in use see the original plugin announcement.

92 thoughts on “WordPress Version Check”

  1. Hi there. There seems to be another problem with the Tiger Admin plugin…

    It appears that the version check notification appears over the ‘View the site’ button.

    Anyone else had this problem? I haven’t altered the Tiger plugin at all.

  2. Dan: It appears my testing failed! Sorry. For some reason during my test install of the Tiger Admin UI plugin I manage not to put the images in the correct place and so didn’t realise that button existed. I will release a fixed version later today.

  3. peter…this is the css i hacked for the tiger admin console:

    <style type=’text/css’>
    #pjw_update {
    position: absolute; top:30px; margin:0; padding:0; right:2px; font-size:12px; z-index:1;}
    .warning {color: orange;}
    .critical {color: red;}
    .info {color: #333333;}
    </style>

    it seems to work for every page in the admin console except for maybe options, depending on how many plugins you have enabled that are generating option menus.

    i’m using Firefox 1.0.5 on MacOSX 10.3.9

  4. jwp: Thanks for the CSS. I’ve also been sent the following CSS from Mark J which puts it down in the bottom lefthand corner for the Tiger Admin UI. This is where I wanted to put it for Tiger in the last update but couldn’t quite sort the CSS out :-(. I think I will be going with Mark’s CSS in the next version which is due real-soon-now!

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  6. Westi, got a slight optimization fix for you:

    You’re doing add_option() on every page load, which creates an extra DB query. Try changing the init() method to this:

    function init()
    {
    if (!get_option(‘pjw_wp_version_check’))
    add_option(‘pjw_wp_version_check’,$this->options,’Settings for the version check plugin.’,’yes’);

    $this->options = get_option(‘pjw_wp_version_check’);
    }

    That way, you check to see if it exists already (which will use the cached options, if it does. If it doesn’t exist, THEN you create it. This saved 3/100 of a second on each page load for me. Every little bit helps!

  7. @MarkJ: I had noticed that myself and saw it as a deficiency in add_option() when I looked into what was happening. I reduced my front page queries/load time from “40 queries. 0.683” to “30 queries. 0.676” with the simple patch I attached to this trac ticket http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1499. It seems the way that I have coded my add_option() and get_options() calls is not unusual.

    The way add_option() currently works really breaks the idea of auto_loading options as it always checks the db for existence of an option rather than checking the options cache first.

    I probably add the simple check you have suggested for now but hopefully my modification to add_option() will make into the next version of WordPress and then the check won’t be necessary.

  8. Garett

    Hi. I’ve found a bug in WordPress 1.5.1.3 that directly affects your plugin. In the IXR class, if you just specify a URL (like this plugin does), it forgets to set the timeout. The easiest way to patch this in your plugin is to add
    $ixrcli->timeout = 30;
    around line 67 (after the useragent string). Either that, or adjust line 63 (the new IXR_Client line) to specify the timeout. I found adding the extra line required less work.

  10. marian

    I’ve install plugin, but I receive on top, the message “Failed to get update information.”

    Why ?

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