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It’s a rare instance where you need to know, from your own code, the state of a plugin but, for instance, this may be something particularly relevant to a theme.

The usual way is to use the PHP command functions_exists to check whether a specific function is present. Of course, hard-coding this is probably not the best idea as function names change. Instead the WordPress function is_plugin_active is a better solution and you only need to specify the (non-changing) plugin slug for this to work.

Now, this will tell you if the plugin is active but what if you also want to know if it’s installed or not?

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Let me first say that I’m guilty. For “performance reasons” I’m always careful to only run functions in their appropriate area of WordPress – so, something only used in the admin area will be checked via the use of is_admin. Only if this is true will I then run that code. It makes sense.

But for plugins there is no performance improvement.

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Many companies that sell premium WordPress Themes will make “Lite” versions available, free of charge, via WordPress.org. It gets the theme known, gives them a promotional springboard and allows people to try many of the theme’s features. For me too it also gives you an opportunity to see what their support is like.

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