Everytime blog software provider WordPress launches a new version, there’s always talk that people are afraid to upgrade because of compatibility issues with the plugins they use. Most worry that their WordPress installation will break after the upgrade.
WordPress security guru Mark Jaquith has posted on the WordPress blog about a new “plugin compatibility tester”. Mark notes, “As part of our continuing efforts to make WordPress core, plugin, and theme upgrades as painless as possible, Michael Adams developed and launched a beta of a new “Compatibility” feature in the plugin directory, powered by your votes. When viewing a plugin in the directory, select a WordPress version and a plugin version from the drop-downs. If there has been feedback about this WordPress / plugin version combination, we’ll show you what percentage of responses marked that combination as compatible vs how many marked it as incompatible.”
The information from the voting is also included in the WordPress API. Now the key is getting enough people to vote to make the responses accurate. Perhaps if they add the voting mechanism into the plugin page inside of the WordPress install, that might help get more people to vote.