Content Freshness Monitor – WordPress Plugin 📌 Plugin Overview
Content Freshness Monitor is a WordPress plugin designed to track the freshness of blog posts and help website administrators identify which content needs updating. It calculates a freshness score based on the last modified date of posts and recommends update priority directly on the WordPress dashboard.
🎯 Plugin Objectives
Monitor content freshness automatically
Encourage regular content updates for better SEO
Provide update priority suggestions
Log post update history
Display insights in the WordPress dashboard
🛠️ Technologies Used
PHP – Core plugin functionality
WordPress Hooks & APIs – Dashboard widget, post meta, actions
HTML – Dashboard table structure
CSS – Priority-based visual indicators
⚙️ Plugin Features
Calculates Freshness Score (0–100) for posts
Classifies content priority as High, Medium, or Low
Displays results in a WordPress Dashboard Widget
Logs post update history using post meta
Lightweight and easy to integrate
📊 Freshness Logic
Freshness score is calculated based on the number of days since the last update
Older posts receive lower scores
Priority is assigned as:
Low Priority: Score > 80
Medium Priority: Score 51–80
High Priority: Score ≤ 50
🧩 Plugin Structure content-freshness-monitor/ │ ├── content-freshness-monitor.php ├── includes/ │ ├── freshness-calculator.php │ ├── priority-recommender.php │ └── update-logger.php └── style.css
🖥️ Dashboard Functionality
Adds a “Content Freshness Monitor” widget to the WordPress dashboard
Displays:
Post Title
Freshness Score
Update Priority
📝 Update Logging
Tracks when post content is updated
Stores update timestamps using WordPress post meta
Useful for audit and content maintenance tracking
🚀 Installation Steps
Upload the plugin folder to /wp-content/plugins/
Activate Content Freshness Monitor from the WordPress Admin Panel
Go to Dashboard → Home to view the widget
👨🎓 Academic Information
Project Type: WordPress Plugin Development
Plugin Name: Content Freshness Monitor
Concepts Used: WordPress Hooks, Dashboard Widgets, Post Meta
📌 Conclusion
The Content Freshness Monitor plugin demonstrates practical use of WordPress plugin development concepts. It helps maintain content quality, supports SEO best practices, and provides an efficient way to monitor and manage outdated posts.