Per Page Sidebars vs Essential Widgets

Head-to-head on the signals that matter, from the public WordPress.org data.

Per Page Sidebars

by Brian Layman

Health D45

Essential Widgets

by Catch Themes

Health B82

Active-install trajectory

Per Page Sidebars Essential Widgets

Active installs, each indexed to 100 at the start of the window. A line above 100 is growing its install base, below 100 is shrinking.

Metric	Per Page Sidebars	Essential Widgets
Active installs Modeled from the public "N+" band and recent downloads.	900–1K	10K–20K ✓
Install trend Change in active installs across the charted window.	-10%	0% ✓
Overall health	D · 45	B · 82 ✓
Maintenance How recently the plugin was updated.	3/100	100/100 ✓
Rating quality Volume-adjusted review quality.	76/100 ✓	71/100
Support Share of forum threads marked resolved.	70/100	70/100
Rating (adjusted)	4.04★ ✓	3.84★
Reviews	10 ✓	2
Ranking optimization How well the listing is tuned to rank on wp.org.	39/100	90/100 ✓
Removal risk Maintenance signals that precede a wp.org closure. Not an official status.	High	Low ✓
Last updated	8.5y ago	2mo ago ✓
Downloads · 30d	144	2.5K ✓
Category	Uncategorized	Uncategorized

✓ marks the stronger plugin on each row. Rows where they're level show no marker.

Release activity

Per Page Sidebars Essential Widgets

7-day average daily downloads. Downloads spike for about a week after each release as the install base re-downloads, so read this as release cadence, not growth.