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Academic Blogger's Toolkit

by dsifford · Uncategorized

A plugin extending the functionality of Wordpress for academic blogging.

⚠ Stale⚠ Likely abandoned
How scoring works →
46 Health · D
Maintenance 3/100
Rating quality 79/100
Support 70/100

46 health vs 56 average across 16,377 Uncategorized plugins

High removal-risk signals

63/100

Maintenance and integrity signals that tend to precede a WordPress.org removal. Not an official status, a heads-up to act.

  • Long abandoned. No update in 6+ years — the top precursor to removal once a vulnerability is found.
  • Compatibility drift. Tested only up to WordPress 5.3.23, well behind 6.8.

Directory ranking optimization

How it's scored →

How well this listing is tuned to rank in WordPress.org search, on the factors an owner controls. Not popularity, optimization.

47 / 100

Under-optimized

Biggest win: Update recency

Update recency 1/100
WP compatibility 17/100
Rating quality 83/100
Listing tuning 100/100

To rank higher: Last updated 2502 days ago — ship an update; wp.org decays a listing's search weight after ~180 days.

Get the full rank-higher report →

Daily downloads

Since 2022-10-05 · 1,425 days · wp.org + Plugin Pulse archive

+15% vs prior 30d
2Downloads · Aug 26

30-day downloads

Rolling 30-day volume · peaks are release surges

132

now · peak 206

13230d downloads · Aug 26

Directory rank vs rivals

wp.org popularity rank over time · higher is better · when a rival's line climbs above yours, they've overtaken you

Academic Blogger's T · #10586 you Borges Bibliography · #47922 teachPress · #4424 Scholar Publications · #12827

Rating trend

Star average over time · dips mark rough releases

4.3Stars · Aug 26

Update activity

How busy the existing users are, measured as downloads in the last 30 days for every 1,000 active sites. A spike means a new release everyone's pulling; a long, slow decline means an aging user base that updates less.

440per 1k installs · Aug 26

Release cadence

No release in a year
from wp.org release tags

How often this plugin actually ships. A steady rhythm is the maintenance signal a single "last updated" date can't show.

0

releases in the last 12 months

6.9y ago

latest release · v5.2.2

20

tagged releases on record

Recent releases

5.2.2 · 6.9y ago5.2.0 · 6.9y ago5.1.0 · 7.3y ago5.0.5 · 7.4y ago5.0.4 · 7.4y ago5.0.3 · 7.5y ago5.0.2 · 7.6y ago5.0.1 · 7.6y ago5.0.0 · 7.6y ago4.13.3 · 8.6y ago4.13.2 · 8.6y ago4.13.1 · 8.6y ago4.13.0 · 8.6y ago4.12.1 · 8.7y ago

What its installed base runs

via wordpress.org

Share of active installs on each version of this plugin · 96% run the current release. Green is the current release; a big slice on older versions is a user base that has stopped updating.

v5.2 96%
v4.13 4%

Estimated active installs

The public count shows “300+”. Our estimate pins where the real number sits.

tracked estimate
300–400 ≈370

Refined from the date this plugin crossed into its current band.

Install history · since 2015-12-05 · 1,386 observations

300Installs · Aug 26

Estimated value

What this plugin might earn a year, and what it might sell for. Modeled from public signals; we don't see anyone's books.

Est. annual revenue

N/A

Est. acquisition value

N/A

No paid tier is visible, so we don't put a figure on revenue or sale value: that would be guessing. The install base is a real asset to an acquirer, just not one public data lets us price. A small install base leaves thin data to model from.

Details

Version
5.2.2
Last updated
6.9y ago
Added
2015-07-04 · 11 yrs old
Requires WP
5.3
Tested up to
5.3.23
Requires PHP
7.0

Recent review vibe

read from the latest 12 reviews to 2023-07-21
Mixed PraiseFeature requestsCompatibilityBroken updatesSupport gone quiet

Reviewers call it the best citation tool for WordPress, but several are stuck on the block editor migration, dropped classic editor support and a PHP requirement bump, and the newest one is asking for an update that hasn't come.

Recent reviews

All reviews on wp.org ↗
  1. psysss
    3.1y ago

    Hello, This is the best and only WP plugin which makes writing research articles practical on WP. It’s urgently needed to have an update that works. I wouldn’t mind paying for a license. So please Derek, do consider an update asap! Thanks!

    Read on wp.org ↗
  2. MarthaLindeman
    5.8y ago

    I have not edited references on my blog since before the block editor. Now I have uninstalled and reinstalled academic toolkit and am trying to use it with the block editor. The user interface shows the bar starting with Add Reference and ending with three dots, but the bar (a-d) for inserting references is not shown. I have not found any way to insert a reference. I have 1296 items in my list of uncited references and I can select the one I want to insert. I just cannot get it to insert into the block where my cursor is located. Thanks in advance for your help!

    Read on wp.org ↗
  3. ddewett
    6.5y ago

    I did not use this plugin, because I was dissuaded from its use by the author’s comments on this (very good) exchange (https://wordpress.org/support/topic/if-you-want-what-it-does-super-but-only-then/). Why am I leaving this review? I want the author to know that for a segment of the population, his design choices leave some of us to find other solutions. I design scientific software for a living, and I would appreciate the comments that I will make here. I can’t imagine having any citation application where the citations are not stored in a database. There is a lot to unpack on that post and I suggest others read it before they download this package. Also, it does contain this ironic gem: “The overall UX of this forum is horrendous.” In short, the author’s rigid design choices cause his userbase to segment (to what degree, I can’t say). I would like to thank him for his forthright description in this referenced post. I would suggest that he make it a sticky or change it into a FAQ. It actually saved me a ton of time, because I almost installed the plugin. Before we finish, yes I gave it two stars. I started at three to be neutral; however, your attitude to your users seems combative (and that warrants the downgrade).

    Read on wp.org ↗
  4. Janos Farkas
    6.8y ago

    Far better than anything else I’ve tried. Astonishingly rich in features, yet simple UI. Well thought out and very well done. Thank you

    Read on wp.org ↗
  5. vastsite
    6.9y ago

    the classic editor plugin has 5+ Million Active Installations. There is no other plugin that has more installations. How can you possibly justify disabling support for it? Very bad decision. This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by vastsite.

    Read on wp.org ↗
  6. AliReza Chamanzar
    7.1y ago

    Tnx Man, I Love it Please Add Option to Activate Footnote on Classic Editor

    Read on wp.org ↗
  7. jlev00
    7.2y ago

    Because all academics love changes such as Gutenberg. This topic was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by jlev00.

    Read on wp.org ↗
  8. Anonymous
    7.3y ago

    Hi! I’m currently building a site called “Potfacts.info.” The goal of this site is to essentially be the “Snopes of Cannabis,” providing well researched information about cannabis complete with citations. I went looking for a simple footnoting plugin. Everything I originally found was low quality and hadn’t been updated in ages. And expecting them to work well with Guternberg was laughable. Then I stumbled on Academic Blogger’s Toolkit. This plug-in is just terrific. It’s exactly what I wanted. In fact, it’s way more than I wanted. The fact that I can give it a URL or an ISBN and it essentially does the hard work of building a proper citation and bibliography section for my article is just incredible, and a massive time-saver.

    Read on wp.org ↗

Behavioral tests

via WP Hive

Automated install-time checks, tested on PHP 7.2.16 · WP 5.2.4

Low memory footprint
Low page-speed impact
Runs on latest PHP + WP
No PHP errors
No JS errors
Activates cleanly
No resource errors
No external HTTP errors
Optimized database use
Frequently updated

Languages

via translate.wordpress.org

Translated into 11 languages, 4 at 90% or more

German 100%
Polish 100%
Persian 91%
Danish 90%
Dutch (Formal) 75%
Russian 48%
German (Formal) 35%
Dutch 20%
Japanese 17%
Czech 5%
Spanish (Mexico) 1%

Growth timeline

Install-tier crossings we have observed, and how long each tier took to outgrow

  1. 2025-12-03 400+ → 300+ down after 386 days in tier
  2. 2024-11-12 500+ → 400+ down after 1 days in tier
  3. 2024-11-11 400+ → 500+ up after 2 days in tier
  4. 2024-11-09 500+ → 400+ down after 218 days in tier
  5. 2024-04-05 600+ → 500+ down after 1 days in tier
  6. 2024-04-04 500+ → 600+ up after 18 days in tier
  7. 2024-03-17 600+ → 500+ down after 222 days in tier
  8. 2023-08-08 700+ → 600+ down after 122 days in tier

Competes with

The plugins that solve the same job, ranked by shared tags then reach, closest match first. The letter on the right is each plugin's health grade (A best, F worst).

Compare head to head →

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Academic Blogger's Toolkit: 300+ active installs, 4.3★ (28 reviews). Plugin Pulse (WP Mayor), as of 2026-08-30. https://plugins.wpmayor.com/plugin/academic-bloggers-toolkit