Widget Manager Light

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

Directory searches this plugin turns up in, and which way each one is moving. WordPress.org publishes no history of search positions, so this starts the day we first tracked a keyword and never backfills.

Not enough tracked days yet to call a direction. Momentum needs at least three keywords measured a week or more apart.

wp.org is where the directory puts the plugin for that search. On merit is where it would sit if results were ranked on rating, support and updates, without the install boost. The last column is how far the wp.org position moved, from our first reading in the last 90 days to the latest.

2 searches this plugin appeared in over the last 90 days, 0 listed. 2 left out as unrelated or noise (years, numbers, stray words). 5 of its tags aren't in the top 24 for their own search.

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

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

Share of active installs on each version of this plugin · 67% run the current release. Green is the current release; a big slice on older versions is a user base that has stopped updating.

Crossed into this band 8 months ago; a band this size takes about a year or more to cross, which places it about 50% of the way through.

1. ★★★★★ ohkevmanaol

   8.4y ago

   So far NO widget manager works with bbPress sidebar widget.

   Read on wp.org ↗
2. ★★★★★ the travel writer

   10.2y ago

   This would be a great plugin for smaller less frequently updated sites but for mine a large travel site it is not much use. Whenever you create a new page it includes all the widgets and you must go into each widget and disable it for each new page or amendment. Sorry, but this is simply impractical as it takes hours on my site to make changes to one page.

   Read on wp.org ↗
3. ★★★★★ ayline

   11.7y ago

   Einfach & Benutzerfreundlich

   Read on wp.org ↗
4. ★★★★★ Sabrina Zeidan

   12.1y ago

   First of all I’d like to thank author for the great job done. It is really powerfull manager with so much options, it was very usefull for me. It’s a pity, but just for few month. My MySQL started crashing but I couldn’t get why, P3 plugin profiler showed nothing, so I moved to more powerfull server, but it kept crashing, so I moved again (VPS 70$ per month) thinking that traffic is too big for resources. But it didn’t solve the problem. Then I got to kmow about plugin Query Monitor which shows all queries send to database. This is how I discovered that Widget Manager Light was sending 150-200 queries per every single page load. Disabling the plugin solved the issue at last.

   Read on wp.org ↗
5. ★★★★★ Moheimen

   12.5y ago

   Thanks 🙂

   Read on wp.org ↗
6. ★★★★★ mathewr

   13.1y ago

   While this plugin works to make widgets visible or invisible, it fails to work well in any environment where there are regular updates. The reason for this is exceedingly simple (so much so that it is surprising that the developer hasn’t identified this problem…almost as if they’ve never tested the plugin in a production environment of any kind): widget visibility cannot be set to off by default. This means that should you place a widget and set it to be only visible on a couple of pages everything will work perfectly well right up until you write a post or add a page. At that point, the widget will be immediately visible on the new post/page. This plugin will work perfectly for people who are looking to create a static, or seldom-updated site. For those people it is likely a 4 or 5 star plugin. For the vast majority of users—who will be regularly adding content to their wordpress sites—this plugin simply adds work to every update cycle. And the more you utilize the plugin, the more work it adds to your cycle. (Imagine you have a dozen widgets meant to be visible on just a few pages. That’s a dozen widgets that must be edited every single time you post.) [Apparently the text of my first review was deemed not as useful as the one word five star reviews and was removed, so I’m just going to write another one. Hopefully the mods will be able to see the clear issues with the plugin and don’t cater to the plugin dev who, of course, would rather not have me explain why their plugin is deeply flawed. But the USERS who are looking at this plugin deserve to know the truth about the rather severe limitations it has. Perhaps a new update to the plugin will add the simple functionality required to make specific widgets default to invisible. Until then, this plugin is exceptionally poorly suited to any real production environment.]

   Read on wp.org ↗
7. ★★★★★ mathewr

   13.1y ago

   With the vast array of plugins available for WordPress and the extreme availability of (inexpensive) freelance coders capable of WP development, I cannot in good conscience recommend a plugin whose developers refuse to answer simple questions about their software without users paying them. All I have to say to the “support” team that told me to pay them before they answered a question that I needed to know the answer to in order to determine if the plugin would even work for my needs is this: Nobody is going to pay you for a product that does not work.

   Read on wp.org ↗
8. ★★★★★ Anonymous

   13.4y ago

   simply great! thank you! better and more user friendly than the other plugins I tested

   Read on wp.org ↗

1 open vulnerability affects the current version (1.18). 0 of 1 disclosed are patched.

1. Open Medium · 5.3 Widget Manager Light <= 1.18 - Missing Authorization ↗
   2025-04-02 CVE-2025-31768 Missing Authorization Affects <= 1.18 No patch available

Automated install-time checks, tested on PHP 7.4.8 · WP 5.9.1

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.

Growth timeline

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

1. 2026-03-04 700+ → 600+ down after 9 days in tier
2. 2026-02-23 600+ → 700+ up after 4 days in tier
3. 2026-02-19 700+ → 600+ down after 2 days in tier
4. 2026-02-17 600+ → 700+ up after 2 days in tier
5. 2026-02-15 700+ → 600+ down after 263 days in tier
6. 2025-05-28 800+ → 700+ down after 197 days in tier
7. 2024-11-12 900+ → 800+ down after 4 days in tier
8. 2024-11-08 800+ → 900+ up after 1 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).

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Drop a live Pulse card for Widget Manager Light into a readme, a review or a deck. It updates itself.

Widget Manager Light: 600+ active installs, 3.8★ (11 reviews). Plugin Pulse (WP Mayor), as of 2026-10-31. https://plugins.wpmayor.com/plugin/widget-manager-light