65
A vintage code editor that might accidentally delete your website.
Healthy
65/100
Early praise for syntax highlighting is now overshadowed by abandonment and critical bugs.
Active installs
~25,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 20k+
Rating
4.5★
95 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
+1%
Holding steady
95 → 96 installs/day
Downloads over time
real new installs per day · release spikes shown separately from the trend2025-04-302025-08-082025-11-162026-02-232026-06-03
organicrelease spikerelease tailorganic trend · 14d rolling median
Holding steady · +1% in the last year
95/day a year ago→96/day today
Reviews
what people actually sayWP Editor is a niche code-highlighting editor plugin that earned early praise for its simplicity and syntax highlighting, but is now widely regarded as abandoned, incompatible with modern WordPress and PHP versions, and prone to serious bugs.
What people like
- +Syntax/code highlighting works across posts, pages, plugin editor, and theme editor×5
- +Described as simple and ready-to-use out of the box compared to alternatives×2
- +Reported to work alongside WP Bakery Visual Composer without conflict (older installs)
Common complaints
- −Plugin appears abandoned and untested with recent major WordPress releases, raising compatibility concerns×3
- −Not compatible with PHP 7+
- −Critical file-editing bug: editing one file can overwrite a different file with no warning
- −Reported to corrupt WordPress installations on some versions
- −Causes all installed plugins to disappear from the admin panel on some WordPress versions
- −Major incompatibility with WPBakery Composer: changes made in the backend editor are not reflected in the Classic Editor
- −Unreliable activation — syntax highlighting fails to load consistently and editor defaults to standard text mode
- −Strips HTML tags (e.g. br tags) rather than preserving them
- −Fullscreen mode needs fixing
Review trustReviews look organic
- 4.50★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.50★
- 4%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower
Not enough review history.
All-time ratings · 95 total
Latest reviews · 90 analyzed
- 2022-02-20★★★★★Doesn't work correctlydanielle1526
- 2020-03-14★★★★★Outdated, possibly abandonedsagency
- 2019-05-02★★★★★Not Install this Pluginermlau
- 2019-02-07★★★★★No longer maintainedDave Navarro, Jr.
- 2018-10-04★★★★★The only plugin works fineAndrews32
- 2018-08-28★★★★★usefulpalombarda
- 2018-05-07★★★★★Major Incompatibility with WPBakery Composertimelessthee1-shot
- 2018-04-30★★★★★Great, works wellTribulant Software
- 2017-08-01★★★★★Goodviewup
- 2017-07-07★★★★★Excellent!!Tani
Releases
recent versions from WordPress.org SVNFor developers & the curious
the raw signals behind the grade — none of this is on the friendly summary aboveDownload signals
Baselines are computed on organic days only — release spikes and their tails are excluded, so they're not inflated by the auto-update wave.
90
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
96
Prior 7-day baseline
80
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
246
Mean release-day peak (30d)
90
Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)
-6.2%
Week-over-week organic trend
Review signals
Concentration and drive-by metrics drive the review-burst and fake-review flags. 30–40% solo reviewers is normal; we only flag the extremes.
—
Max month share · biggest single 30-day window
—
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
82%
5★ share in analyzed sample
4%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
—
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
4.49 → 4.50★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered