You can’t assume everyone is running the latest version of WordPress, especially around big point releases.
Simple Version Check
If you want your code to be backwards compatible (keep it within reason), you can do a simple WordPress version check with conditionals by using:
get_bloginfo('version');
Or just use the global variable $wp_version.
For instance, to check if the user had WordPress 3.1 installed, you could do something like this:
if ( $wp_version >= 3.1 ) {
// run some code
}
More reference is here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_bloginfo
Use a Function
If you are referencing this multiple times, you may want to set it up as a function. Austin Passy recommends this:
if ( ! function_exists( 'is_version' ) ) {
function is_version( $version = '3.1' ) {
global $wp_version;
if ( version_compare( $wp_version, $version, '>=' ) ) {
return false;
}
return true;
}
}
You can read about version compare at php.net.
Use function_exists
Another easy way to find the version is to check for a function that was introduced after a certain release. For instance, post formats were introduced in 3.1. So to see if it 3.1 or higher you could use something like:
<?php
if (function_exists('has_post_format)) {
// 3.1 specific code
}
?>
I actually use this function:
if ( ! function_exists( ‘is_version’ ) ) {
function is_version( $version = ’3.0′ ) {
global $wp_version;
if ( version_compare( $wp_version, $version, ‘<' ) ) {
return false;
}
return true;
}
}
Cool. I added it to the post. Any reason to use this over the basic check?
No not really. Just easier for me to create the function and call
is_version()throughout the plugin or theme files.Or you can check the $wp_version variable – the get_bloginfo(‘version’) function simply returns this variable.
Good point! I updated the post a bit.