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Header Requirements

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As described in Getting Started, the main PHP file should include header comment what tells WordPress that a file is a plugin and provides information about the plugin.

Minimum Fields Minimum Fields

At a minimum, a header comment must contain the Plugin Name:

<?php
/**
 * Plugin Name: YOUR PLUGIN NAME
 */

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Header Fields Header Fields

Available header fields:

  • Plugin Name: (required) The name of your plugin, which will be displayed in the Plugins list in the WordPress Admin.
  • Plugin URI: The home page of the plugin, which should be a unique URL, preferably on your own website. This must be unique to your plugin. You cannot use a WordPress.org URL here.
  • Description: A short description of the plugin, as displayed in the Plugins section in the WordPress Admin. Keep this description to fewer than 140 characters.
  • Version: The current version number of the plugin, such as 1.0 or 1.0.3.
  • Author: The name of the plugin author. Multiple authors may be listed using commas.
  • Author URI: The author’s website or profile on another website, such as WordPress.org.
  • License: The short name (slug) of the plugin’s license (e.g. GPL2). More information about licensing can be found in the WordPress.org guidelines.
  • License URI: A link to the full text of the license (e.g. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html).
  • Text Domain: The gettext text domain of the plugin. More information can be found in the Text Domain section of the How to Internationalize your Plugin page.
  • Domain Path: The domain path let WordPress know where to find the translations. More information can be found in the Domain Path section of the How to Internationalize your Plugin page.
  • Network: Whether the plugin can only be activated network-wide. Can only be set to true, and should be left out when not needed.

A valid PHP file with a header comment might look like this:

<?php
/**
 * Plugin Name: WordPress.org Plugin
 * Plugin URI:  https://example.com/plugins/the-basics/
 * Description: Basic WordPress Plugin Header Comment
 * Version:     20160911
 * Author:      WordPress.org
 * Author URI:  https://author.example.com/
 * License:     GPL2
 * License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
 * Text Domain: wporg
 * Domain Path: /languages
 */

Expand full source codeCollapse full source code

You can play with the different header fields using the Plugin Header Generator.

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Notes Notes

Alert: When assigning a version number to your project, keep in mind that WordPress uses the PHP version_compare() function to compare plugin version numbers. Therefore, before you release a new version of your plugin, you should make sure that this PHP function considers the new version to be “greater” than the old one. For example, 1.02 is actually greater than 1.1.