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. marian: The “Failed to get update information” message means that for some reason the plugin has not tried to contact the webservice to collect the latest message. This is probably because the plugin thought it had run recently enough to not check for an update.

    If this persists I would be interested to know the following information to help debug the problem: What versions of WordPress, PHP, MySql are in use on your host and what type of host is it Apache/IIS Windows/Linux

  2. marian

    I use on locale, XAMPP 1.4.14 with PHP 5.04, mySql API 4.1.12, and latest version of WordPress 1.5.1.3.
    The same error is happen on the another PC.

  3. marian: I would guess from the setup you are using that you are running WordPress locally on Windows XP – Can you install phpmyadmin or use the mysql command line tools and send me the value of the pjw_wp_version_check option in the wp_options table – you can use the contact form on my blog or post it in a comment here. (Sorry for the delayed response – I have been layed up in bed with a chest infection :-()

  4. marian

    I’m sorry, but I don’t know how… I’m newbee.
    XAMPPP is contained MySQL, Apache, PHPMyAdmin. Now, in phpMyAdmin > wordpressDatabase > wp_options
    In right panel, in structure of data, I didn’t found any “pjw_wp_version_check” option !

  5. marian: I have just set up a test install of XAMPP v1.4.14 locally and install WordPress v1.5.1.3 and Version Check v0.90. Running XAMPP with PHP5 fails as you have found – if I switch XAMPP to using PHP4 then the Version Check plugin works ok.

    It seems that in the PHP5 bundled with XAMPP fsockopen is not working correctly and returns with an error even though it opens a connection successfully – I found this php bug which shows the same issue that I am seing. I suggest for now you try using PHP4 with XAMPP until this is fixed in PHP5 on windows.

    Interestingly in tracking this down I found a bug in the error handling within the plugin which I will fix in the next release – you should have been seeing an Error message rather than the message that was being displayed. 🙂

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  10. Dan McCullough

    XML-RPC Error:-32300:transport error – could not open socket

    why would I get that?

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