Managing WordPress Plugins And Themes: Upgrades, Licensing, Compatibility

ByThe WPDevr Team

Keeping Your Site Secure and Supported

Keeping your WordPress site’s plugins and themes up-to-date is crucial for maintaining security and ongoing support. Outdated plugins and themes often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers to gain access to your site. They also tend to have compatibility issues with newer versions of WordPress and other plugins/themes. Additionally, developers stop releasing updates and bug fixes for older plugin/theme versions. Using unsupported plugins or themes puts your site at risk.

Some best practices for managing plugins and themes include: carefully testing updates on a staging environment before deploying to production, subscribing to developer notifications about critical security updates, and disabling/removing unused plugins and themes. When updating, check plugin/theme changelogs for mentions of deprecated features, breaking changes, or compatibility issues. If available, utilize automated background update options for trusted plugins/themes to ensure they remain current.

Understanding Plugin and Theme Licensing

When using WordPress plugins and themes, it is important to understand the licensing terms that govern their usage. Most plugins and themes are released under one of two major licensing models:

  • Open source licenses like the GNU GPLv2 – Allow you to use, modify, and redistribute the code freely, even in commercial projects. However, any derivative works must carry the same open source license.
  • Commercial/proprietary licenses – Typically limit use to a single site or organization, with more restrictive permissions around modifications or transfers of the codebase. Paid licensing usually comes with premium support from the developers.

Before installing new plugins or themes, carefully inspect the licensing details listed by developers. Confirm that usage terms permit your intended site activities. Look for phrases like “free for commercial use” or “requires a developer license purchase for paid sites” as clues. When mixing both open source and commercial options, verify their compatibility licenses do not conflict.

Be sure to also read and follow the detailed Terms of Service set by each plugin/theme developer regarding security, transfers, liability limitations, maintenance expectations, and more. Keep careful records on licenses and TOS documents for plugins/themes actively in use.

Checking Plugin and Theme Compatibility

With the extensive WordPress ecosystem consisting of thousands of plugins and themes, compatibility issues are quite common. Fortunately, there are some helpful tools available for evaluating compatibility before installing new plugins or themes:

  • Test stacks – Services like SimplyTest.Me allow you to access a WordPress environment populated with plugins/themes for testing compatibility.
  • Requirements checkers – Plugin management systems such as TGMPA can assess server resource requirements (PHP version, memory limit, etc) needed by a plugin.
  • Interaction scanners – Utilities like Plugin Interactions can detect functionality overlaps or conflicts between active plugins.
  • Version validators – Resources like WP Version Checker relate known compatible plugin/theme versions with different WordPress releases.

In addition to using tools, it is also important to manually review each plugin and theme to catch compatibility issues. Check developer documentation regarding unsupported plugin/theme versions and WordPress release milestones. Scan changelogs looking for mentions of deprecated support for major WordPress functionality or browser modes.

On the theme side, check plugin developer guidelines regarding supported theme frameworks like Genesis or popular builders like Elementor. For marketplace themes, forums are another great venue to explore where users detail experiences with plugin compatibility.

Troubleshooting Plugin and Theme Conflicts

Occasionally plugins and themes end up in conflict, causing each other to behave unexpectedly or even crashing sites. Some common triggers underlying these conflicts include:

  • Version mismatches – Running outdated plugin/themes no longer supported by newer releases
  • Coding issues – Plugin/theme hooking into the same limited resources or using incompatible coding approaches
  • Functionality overlaps – Two plugins trying to handle the same tasks like contact forms or SEO

Troubleshooting efforts should start by isolating the offending plugins or themes. Begin by switching your site into a default theme like Twenty Twenty-One with all plugins disabled. Then, slowly activate plugins and swap themes one-by-one until the issues reappear. Pay close attention to error logs during this process.

If you can pinpoint a specific plugin/theme pairing causing trouble, check their support forums and open GitHub issues to see if anyone else reporting the same problem. There may already be flagged fixes available.

In some cases, you may need to modify theme code around certain plugin hooks to resolve conflicts. Refer to plugin documentation for all available hooks and examples of best coding practices. Lean on developer communities for peer review of any complex troubleshooting code tweaks.

Example Plugin Update Code Snippets

Updating WordPress plugins requires using built-in WordPress functions, manually replacing plugin files via SFTP/FTP, or utilizing automated background update options. Here are some code examples:

Manually Updating Plugin Via WordPress

/* Check for plugin updates & display notifications */ 
add_filter('plugins_api','my_plugin_update', 10, 3);
function my_plugin_update() {
  // Plugin data
  $plugin_slug = 'my-plugin'; 
  $plugin_file = 'my-plugin/my-plugin.php';
  
  // Check WordPress API for updates
  $plugin_info = get_transient('my_plugin-update');
  if(!$plugin_info){
    $plugin_info = plugins_api(
      'plugin_information', array(
        'slug' => $plugin_slug, 
        'fields' => array(
          'banners' => true,
          'reviews' => true  
        )
     )
   );
   if(!is_wp_error($plugin_info)){
     set_transient('my_plugin-update', $plugin_info, DAY_IN_SECONDS);
   }
 }

 // Display update messages
 if($plugin_info && version_compare($plugin_info->version, $plugin_data['Version']) === 1) {
    echo '
A new version of this plugin is available
';
    echo $plugin_info->name . ' ' . $plugin_info->version . ' is available';
 } 
}

Using FTP to Replace Plugin Files

/* Connect & login to FTP server */
$ftp_server = 'ftp.yourdomain.com';
$ftp_user = 'username';
$ftp_pass = 'password';  

$conn_id = ftp_connect($ftp_server) or die("Couldn't connect"); 

// Login  
if (@ftp_login($conn_id, $ftp_user, $ftp_pass)) {

  /* Upload new plugin files */ 
  ftp_chdir($conn_id, '/path/to/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/my-plugin');   

  // Upload new main plugin file
  ftp_put($conn_id, 'my-plugin.php', 'mynewpluginfile.php', FTP_BINARY);  

  // Upload extra plugin files
  ftp_put($conn_id, 'configs.php', 'newconfigs.php', FTP_BINARY);
  ftp_put($conn_id, 'widgets.php', 'newwidgets.php', FTP_BINARY);

  // ...

  ftp_close($conn_id); 

}

Function to Check for Plugin Updates via WordPress API

function myplugin_check_for_updates() {

  // Plugin slug & version
  $slug = 'my-plugin'; 
  $version = '1.1.5';  

  // Arguments for API query
  $args = array(
    'slug' => $slug,
    'version' => $version  
  );

  // Send API request
  $response = wp_remote_get('http://api.wordpress.org/plugins/update-check/1.1/', array(
      'timeout' => 15,
      'body' => array(
        'request' => serialize($args)  
      )
  ));

  // Handle response 
  if(!is_wp_error($response)){
     $plugin_info = @unserialize($response['body']);
     if($plugin_info && $plugin_info->new_version){
        return $plugin_info; 
     }
  } 
  
  return false;

}

Conclusion and Best Practices Summary

Effectively managing your WordPress plugins and themes involves keeping them updated, vetting licensing terms, confirming compatibility, and troubleshooting conflicts. By following security best practices around updates, leaning on available plugin/theme testing tools, and carefully tracking licenses, you can avoid many common issues website administrators face.

When problems do occur, methodically isolate the responsible plugins and themes to determine origins. Tap into the WordPress support ecosystem through forums and developer communities when tackling complex diagnosis or remediation. Use code snippets to programmatically check for updates or replace plugin files where helpful.

Investing time upfront to actively manage your plugin and theme portfolio pays off through improved security, performance, sustainability, and peace of mind across your WordPress site.

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