Is it safe to use outdated WordPress plugins?

Imagine you’ve found the perfect WordPress plugin to add a cool feature to your website. But there’s a problem: it hasn’t been updated recently.

You may be wondering if it is safe to use, or if it will break your site. This is a common question for many WordPress users, especially beginners.

At WPBeginner, we can give you our perspective as a site that uses many plugins, and as a developer who has created many popular plugins. While outdated plugins can pose security and performance risks, we can help you evaluate those risks so you can make an informed decision.

This article will explain how to tell if it’s safe to install an outdated WordPress plugin. We’ll discuss the potential risks and provide steps to evaluate a plugin’s reliability, helping you keep your site secure and make informed choices.

How Do WordPress Plugins Become Obsolete?

A WordPress plugin may become outdated if it has not received any updates in a while or if the plugin author has not tested it to ensure its compatibility with the latest 3 major versions of WordPress.

We always recommend that readers keep plugins on their WordPress sites updated. These updates keep plugins compatible with changes in the WordPress core, add new features, fix bugs, and address security vulnerabilities.

But what if the plugin you’re using or want to use hasn’t been updated in a while? Or what if it hasn’t been tested on the latest version of WordPress? Is it still safe to use?

The short answer is: it depends on the plugin.

Sometimes, outdated plugins simply won’t work properly with newer versions of WordPress. Or, the plugin may even have been abandoned by the developers so that no new features will ever be added.

The biggest risk of outdated plugins is that they may present security issues. If a plugin is not maintained or updated, it may become a target for hackers.

However, just because a plugin is outdated doesn’t mean it has these problems. Some outdated plugins are perfectly safe to use. But we recommend that you thoroughly test the plugin before installing it on your live site.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to tell if a WordPress plugin is outdated and how to determine if it’s safe to install.

Check if the plugin is out of date

The WordPress plugin directory displays a lot of useful information about each plugin. For example, it clearly shows the date each plugin was last updated and the latest version of WordPress that the plugin was tested on.

If a plugin has not been tested against multiple versions of WordPress, a warning will appear at the top of the plugin page, similar to this:

Where does WordPress get this information? Plugin authors are required to provide this information in the readme file when submitting their plugin to the WordPress plugin directory.

Unfortunately, busy developers don’t always update the readme file when WordPress releases a new update. Sometimes a plugin has been tested more recently than its plugin page indicates.

Now that you know how to check if a WordPress plugin is outdated, let’s look at how to tell if it’s safe to install.

Check if outdated plugins are safe to install

Just because a plugin hasn’t been updated or tested recently doesn’t mean it won’t work. How to tell if a plugin is safe to install on your WordPress site?

View user ratings and reviews

You can view user opinions and complaints about the plugin by clicking on the Reviews tab in the WordPress Plugin Directory. If the plugin has compatibility issues with the latest version of WordPress, other users may have mentioned it on this page.

You can also check out the user ratings. If the reviews are recent and have 5-star reviews, then you can safely assume that the plugin will work on your site.

View the plugin support page

Clicking the Support tab will take you to the plugin’s support forum. Here you can review any issues users have encountered with the plugin.

You will also see how responsive the plugin developer is and whether they successfully resolve issues in a timely manner.

If you decide to install the plugin, you can come here if you need support. You can read our guide on how to properly ask for and get support for WordPress .

View the plugin development page

Another way to check if a plugin is safe to install is to visit the plugin development page. This can show how active the plugin developer is.

Simply go to the WordPress plugins page and click on the Develop tab.

In particular, check out the Changelog section to see how often the plugin is updated and what changes and improvements have been made recently.

If the developer is actively updating the plugin, then it generally means that the plugin is high quality and safe to use on your WordPress site.

On the other hand, if a plugin hasn’t been updated for more than two years, it probably means that it’s been abandoned. In this case, you shouldn’t install it because the developer isn’t actively maintaining it.

Check out the WPBeginner tutorial for the plugin

You can also check if the plugin is safe to install on the WPBeginner blog. You can find tutorials for the plugin by going to Blog » WordPress Plugins page or using the search feature.

If we have recently published a tutorial about a plugin, then this means that the plugin was compatible with the latest version of WordPress at the time we tested it.

Testing the plugin on a staging site or local WordPress installation

Let’s assume you’ve completed the above steps and determined that it’s safe to install an outdated plugin. What do you do next?

You may want to test the plugin on a staging site or local WordPress installation first instead of installing it on your live site right away.

A WordPress staging site is a testing site that you can use to safely test your plugin for issues before you go live.

The staging site lives on your web hosting server, so you can be confident that if the plugin works there, your live site won’t experience issues.

Some of the best WordPress hosting companies , like Bluehost , SiteGround , and WP Engine , offer one-click staging sites. You can also create a staging site manually or using a plugin.

In addition to using a staging site, you can also install WordPress on your own computer and test plugins. You can follow our guide on how to install WordPress locally on Mac or Windows , or install it using XAMPP.

If the plugin works fine on your test site, then it’s safe to install it on your live site.

Final Thoughts

While it’s never a good idea to use outdated plugins, sometimes the plugin you’re looking for is the only one that meets your needs. In this case, you need to do your due diligence, as we mentioned in our guide.

You can also check the reputation of the author. If the plugin author is popular, you can email them and ask if they have plans to update the plugin.

Some plugins are so simple that they don’t need updating at all, so the authors may not release updates because they know the plugins still work. The popular “Page Links To” plugin is a good example of this.

Written by Mark Jaquith, one of the WordPress core contributors, this plugin has been around for a long time. It doesn’t require any active development because it only does one thing, and does it well. So, even if it shows an “out of date” error on WordPress.org, you can install it without any worries.

The downside, though, is that if you want more advanced redirection features, this plugin lacks this feature. That’s why many users turn to the All in One SEO plugin , as it includes not only this feature, but many other powerful SEO features as well.

Expert Guide to Using WordPress Plugins

We hope this tutorial helped you understand whether it is safe to use outdated plugins in WordPress. You may also want to check out some other guides on choosing and using WordPress plugins:

• What are WordPress plugins? How do they work?
• Beginner's Guide: How to Choose the Best WordPress Plugins
• Do Inactive Plugins Slow Down WordPress? Should I Delete Them?
• A Guide on How to Properly Uninstall WordPress Plugins
• Best WordPress Security Plugins to Protect Your WordPress Blog

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