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Simple customize

by Marius L. J. · Uncategorized

Also makes 3 other plugins · 890+ installs across the portfolio →

It's your site, now customize it!

⚠ Stale⚠ Likely abandoned⚠ Few reviews
How scoring works →
45 Health · D
Maintenance 3/100
Rating quality 76/100
Support 70/100

45 health vs 56 average across 16,377 Uncategorized plugins

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 5.6.19.

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

Biggest win: Update recency

Update recency 3/100
WP compatibility 25/100
Rating quality 55/100
Listing tuning 100/100

To rank higher: Last updated 2094 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 · 1,426 days · wp.org + Plugin Pulse archive

+41% vs prior 30d
0Downloads · Aug 26

30-day downloads

Rolling 30-day volume · peaks are release surges

48

now · peak 86

4830d 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

Simple customize · #18063 you Visual CSS Style Edi · #925 Generate Child Theme · #2262 TJ Custom CSS · #2466

Rating trend

Star average over time · dips mark rough releases

4.5Stars · 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.

686per 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

5.7y ago

latest release · v1.7.1

8

tagged releases on record

Recent releases

1.7.1 · 5.7y ago1.7.0 · 8.8y ago1.6.6 · 9.5y ago1.6.5 · 10.4y ago1.6.4 · 10.7y ago1.6 · 11.5y ago1.5 · 11.7y ago1.4 · 11.7y ago

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 ≈77

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

Install history · since 2015-09-05 · 1,392 observations

70Installs · 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
1.7.1
Last updated
5.7y ago
Added
2013-07-24 · 13 yrs old
Requires WP
3.4
Tested up to
5.6.19
Requires PHP

Recent reviews

All reviews on wp.org ↗
  1. X-Raym
    11.8y 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
    11.9y 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
    12.9y 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
    13.1y 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.

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

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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Preview card ↗

Simple customize: 70+ active installs, 4.5★ (4 reviews). Plugin Pulse (WP Mayor), as of 2026-08-31. https://plugins.wpmayor.com/plugin/simple-customizer