To WordPress Plugin Authors – Add Changelogs

The lack of changelogs in a lot of WordPress plugins is something that’s bothered me for a while, and I wasn’t the only one. I’m very wary of upgrading plugins, and when I see that a plugin needs to be upgraded in my WordPress dashboard, I’d like to know exactly what’s being changed. It might be a major security fix, it might be a minor bug, it might not be a necessary update at all. Changelogs give this information to end users about changes from version to version.

Well, there’s some good news for all of you who like to check out the changelogs before upgrading plugins, but it’ll require some action on behalf of the plugin authors. There is now a standardized way of adding changelog information to the plugin’s readme.txt file. To plugin authors wondering how to do this, read this post on Peter Westwood’s blog. This information will then be displayed on a dedicated “Changelog” tab on the plugin’s page on the WordPress.org plugin repository.

I know themes aren’t usually updated as often as plugins are, but I’m wondering if it would be difficult to implement something similar for WordPress themes hosted in the official theme directory. Anyone have any thoughts about changelogs for themes too?