One problem that has plagued WordPress users for quite sometime is the system of upgrading and using plugins. With some six odd years behind WordPress, there are thousands of plugins available. This makes it possible to run nearly any type of installation. It’s one of the reasons so many people have turned over to WordPress, and it continues to grow.

Although many developers write notes about incompatibilities within the plugin, it makes more sense to leave some of this up to the people who are actually using the plugins.

A new area is displayed within each plugin, as shown on this plugin, called Compatibility. It is currently in Beta, and will likely contain some improvements in the future. However, I don’t know how many people will actually use this feature. You must have an account with the WordPress.org area in order to vote, and most people will not join just to vote on a plugin’s compatibility.

While all the versions of WordPress from 1.5 through 2.9 are listed, there are relatively few small releases of WordPress that have “broken” specific plugins. Most plugins are compatible with multiple versions of WordPress, and are only not compatible if the core coding changes.

What do you think of these changes and do they really help in the issues surrounding plugin releases?