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Simple customize

by Marius L. J. · Uncategorized

Also makes 4 other plugins · 1.3K+ installs across the portfolio →

It's your site, now customize it!

Try it live opens a temporary test site in your browser, which can take about 20 seconds to load. Plugins that rely on outside services or a full server may not work completely there.

⚠ Stale⚠ Likely abandoned⚠ Few reviews

Health

D 45/100

Stale · Likely abandoned · Few reviews

Active installs

70+

≈78 estimated

Momentum

+125%

downloads vs prior 30d

Biggest opportunity: “css”, “customisation” and “customization” aren't earning a slot. You list them, but you're not in the first 24 results for those searches. WordPress.org counts only your first five tags, so free the slot for a search you can win.

How scoring works →
45 Health · D
Maintenance 3/100
Rating quality 76/100
Support 70/100

45 health vs 58 average across 25,737 Uncategorized plugins

Install conversion

How it's measured →

0.4%

of downloads still active

At least 70 of 18K lifetime downloads are still running, below its category: the median Uncategorized plugin keeps 0.6%, across 17,769 plugins.

Downloads count every update, not just first installs, so older and more frequently released plugins read lower. Compare against other Uncategorized plugins, not across the directory. wp.org reports active installs as the bottom of a band, so the real rate is this or higher.

Removal-risk signals

53/100

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 5+ years — the top precursor to removal once a vulnerability is found.
  • Falling behind WordPress. Tested up to WordPress 5.6.23.

Details

Version
1.7.1
Last updated
5.9y ago
Added
2013-07-24 · 13 yrs old
Requires WP
3.4
Tested up to
5.6.23
Requires PHP
—

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.

43 / 100

Under-optimized

Most to gain: Update recency

Update recency 2/100

Updated 2155 days ago, past the ~180 days where wp.org starts discounting

WP compatibility 25/100

Tested up to WordPress 5.6.23; the current branch is 6.8

Rating quality 55/100

4.5★ over 4 reviews, smoothed to 4.13★ and held back under 25 reviews

Listing tuning 100/100

5 of 5 tags set · short description in place

To rank higher: Last updated 2155 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 5 Oct 2022 · 1,487 days · wp.org + Plugin Pulse archive

+125% vs prior 30d
030 Oct 2026

30-day downloads

Rolling 30-day volume · peak 86 · peaks are release surges

7530 Oct 2026

Directory rank

Ranked about #18,200 to #19,000, alongside the other plugins at 70+ installs. Plugins with the same install count swap places between wp.org requests, so this is where most of them sit. Checked monthly, last on 21 Oct 2026.

Rating trend

Star average over time · dips mark rough releases

4.530 Oct 2026

Update activity

Downloads in the last 30 days for every 1,000 active sites.

Not enough installs to measure. This needs at least 100 active sites; below that, a handful of downloads reads as tens of thousands.

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

5.9y ago

latest release · v1.7.1 · 6 Dec 2020

8

tagged releases on record

Recent releases

1.7.1 · 6 Dec 20201.7.0 · 14 Nov 20171.6.6 · 10 Mar 20171.6.5 · 11 Apr 20161.6.4 · 6 Dec 20151.6 · 16 Feb 20151.5 · 27 Dec 20141.4 · 16 Dec 2014

What its installed base runs

via wordpress.org

Share of active installs on each version of this plugin · 100% run the current release. Green is the current release; a big slice on older versions is a user base that has stopped updating.

v1.7 100%

Estimated active installs

The public count shows “70+”. Our estimate pins where the real number sits.

tracked estimate
70–80 ≈78

Crossed into this band 3 months ago and a band this size takes about a year or more to cross, so the real count is still just under 80.

Install history since 5 Sep 2015

7030 Oct 2026

Recent reviews

All reviews on wp.org ↗
  1. ★★★★★ X-Raym
    11.9y ago

    This plugin is not perfect yet, but we can feel it’s power : add easiy flexible customization for any theme, free or premium or custom. Support is nice, and nice feature are coming This is a very promising project 🙂

    Read on wp.org ↗
  2. ★★★★★ qcalamin
    12.0y ago

    Simple customize plugin is really a very good plugin for customization. Thanks! This topic was modified 9 years, 5 months ago by Samuel Wood (Otto). This topic was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by Marius L. J.. Reason: Removed link reference

    Read on wp.org ↗
  3. ★★★★★ Bryan Willis
    13.1y ago

    This is by far one of the coolest wordpress plugins you’ll find. It gives designers, who aren’t great PHP experts, an easy way to create theme options without having to do anything beside css. However, this plugin is great for anyone wanting to create quick theme options, not just novice users. It could completely replace the need for theme developers to use a typical “theme options framework”. The only thing I think it’s missing, that’s a must add is a capability manager (forgive me if it’s already there and I’m missing it). Currently there is no way to hide the advanced element selector and framework by user role. When creating theme options for a client the advanced element selector creates a lot of confusion for people who don’t know what they’re doing and shouldn’t be using advanced options to begin with. A quick fix is to simply use {display:none} on the customizer after you’re finished coding, but a “hide by user role” would completely eliminate the need for any other theme customizer in my opinion. All and all, no doubt this plugin or something very similar will be the future of theme developing.

    Read on wp.org ↗
  4. ★★★★★ Peter Booker
    13.3y ago

    It took me a few minutes to get used to how it works, then I was happily changing the style of anything I could click on. This is an excellent extension of the customizer and really shows its power. I would like to see some more graphical interfaces for choosing styling options in the future, but I think this plugin has great promise. Props for showing off the power of the customizer and for making it easier for users to style their websites.

    Read on wp.org ↗

Behavioral tests

via WP Hive

Automated install-time checks, tested on PHP 7.4.8 · WP 5.6

✓ 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 132 languages, 0 at 90% or more

Spanish (Spain) 29%
Japanese 26%
Russian 23%
French (France) 22%
Dutch 21%
German 21%
Italian 21%
Romanian 21%
Polish 20%
Serbian 20%
Bulgarian 19%
Czech 19%
English (Canada) 19%
English (UK) 19%
Finnish 19%
Hungarian 19%
Norwegian (Bokmål) 19%
Persian 19%
Portuguese (Brazil) 19%
Slovak 19%
Arabic 18%
Chinese (China) 18%
Croatian 18%
Danish 18%

Plus 108 more locales with partial translations.

AI assistants

How it's measured →

Whether ChatGPT and Claude name this plugin when asked the category question, and whether the readme gives them something to quote.

Not measured yet for this plugin’s topics. Its tracked searches are not among the measured topics. See the topics measured so far.

Readme readiness

2 of 8 pass · checked 29 Oct 2026

Can an assistant quote this readme? Eight deterministic checks over the wp.org listing, no model involved.

  • ! Says what it does Short description is 33 characters, too short to say what the plugin does.
  • ! Has a FAQ Only 2 questions in the FAQ; 3 or more gives an assistant something to match.
  • ! FAQ asks real questions 0 of 2 FAQ entries are headings, not questions ("undefined").
  • ! Names who it is for Never says who the plugin is for or what they use it for.
  • ! Names what it works with Names no plugin, service or platform it works with.
  • ! Headings and lists 0 headings and 0 lists; assistants quote headed sections and bullet lists, not paragraphs.
  • ✓ Enough to quote 1,544 characters of description.
  • ✓ Tags match the text 3 of 5 tags appear in the text; "customisation", "design" do not.

Growth timeline

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

  1. 2026-08-07 80+ → 70+ down after 23 days in tier
  2. 2026-07-15 70+ → 80+ up after 1 days in tier
  3. 2026-07-14 80+ → 70+ down after 195 days in tier
  4. 2025-12-31 90+ → 80+ down after 106 days in tier
  5. 2025-09-16 100+ → 90+ down after 1003 days in tier
  6. 2022-12-18 200+ → 100+ down after 1 days in tier
  7. 2022-12-17 100+ → 200+ up after 2 days in tier
  8. 2022-12-15 200+ → 100+ down after 834 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).

Embed this report card

Drop a live Pulse card for Simple customize into a readme, a review or a deck. It updates itself.

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Preview card ↗

Simple customize: 70+ active installs, 4.5★ (4 reviews). Plugin Pulse (WP Mayor), as of 2026-10-31. https://plugins.wpmayor.com/plugin/simple-customizer

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