Site Health should check for incompatible plugins and plugins no longer maintained

[galbaras]

WordPress no longer supports installing plugins from the repository that have not been tested with the respective core version. However, site health doesn't report such plugins when core has been updated beyond what the plugins have been tested for.

I think this should be added and reported with low severity.

When a plugin has not been tested with the 3 releases prior to the respective core version, the severity should be higher to match the current standard on the plugin repository.

The severity should be higher again when the plugin has been discontinued.

This is relevant for wp.org plugins, but can be extended to plugins from other sources using standards for compatibility statements and/or programming hooks.

Themes should be checked and reported in a similar manner.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Replying to galbaras:

WordPress no longer supports installing plugins from the repository that have not been tested with the respective core version. However, site health doesn't report such plugins when core has been updated beyond what the plugins have been tested for.

FWIW, the intention in #43986 was to only block installation if a plugin requires a newer version of PHP or WordPress. There should not be any changes in regard to the tested up to version.

I've just tested to confirm: plugins not tested with the current WordPress version do show a warning (as they used to in previous versions), but that does not block the installation.

[galbaras]

Thanks for testing this, @SergeyBiryukov .

Using the severity of the notices, Site Health should replicate what the installer would do, only in retrospect. My point was that when things change, this is the way to find out and take corrective action, but if the checks just pass, site owners may not realize what's happening and do nothing.

[desrosj]

Moving Site Health tickets into their lovely new home, the Site Health component.

[thomasprice61]

WordPress 5.5 provides a method for theme and plugin authors to set supported WP and PHP versions:

 * Requires at least: 5.0
 * Requires PHP: 7.2

Can Site Health be enhanced to check these (if they exist) and report on incompatibilities?

[galbaras]

Looks like much code can be borrowed from ​Plugin Compatibility Checker or from ​Better Plugin Compatibility Control. They use different approaches, but once versions are checked, the results can be presented both by Site Health and on the Plugins page, possible with a screen option to disable it.