WordPress.org

Is this plugin for me?

This plugin is only going to be of use to you if:

1. You are a plugin author and you want a ridiculously easy way to include up to date information about any of your plugins in your blog posts or pages.
2. You are the author of a blog that highlights plugins of interest and you want to ensure that information in your posts remains up to date.

Which attributes of a plugin can I display?

The majority of the available shortcodes can be seen from the post writing screen. Just click the '[show]' link in the 'Plugin Info' box.

Please see http://lud.icro.us/wordpress-plugin-info/ for a definitive list of all the available shortcodes. There are a few additional (less useful) shortcodes listed there.

Shortcodes which display a formatted hyperlink can have their default link text overridden by adding a 'text' parameter. For example: [plugin homepage text='Homepage'] will display a link to the plugin homepage with the link text 'Homepage'.

Can I display plugin info outside of my blog posts?

Yes! You can use the plugin_info() function anywhere in your template. The function takes two parameters, the slug of your plugin and the attribute you'd like to display. The following example will display the last updated date for my User Switching plugin:

<?php plugin_info( 'user-switching', 'updated' ); ?>

You can also get the info rather than printing it out using the get_plugin_info() function:

<?php $updated = get_plugin_info( 'user-switching', 'updated' ); ?>

The geek stuff

The plugin information is collected from wp.org each time you save your post or page. It is updated hourly using WordPress' cron system and uses the Plugin API available in WordPress 2.7 or later. The plugin data is stored as an associative array in a custom field called 'plugin-info', and the plugin slug you enter is saved as a custom field called 'plugin'. For supergeeks, this means you can also access the plugin data using get_post_meta(), but I'll let you figure that out for yourself.