DW Last Modified

A WordPress plugin that makes the last modified date, time and modifying user more accessible in the admin.

It adds a sortable Last Modified column to every post-type list table showing the date, the time and who made the change, adds the timestamp to the Publish meta box and to the post-updated admin messages, and provides a [dw-last-modified] shortcode and template tags for front-end use.

Installation

Not distributed through WordPress.org. Releases are published on GitHub and served to sites through the DigiWatts update proxy.

• For a site: register the slug dw-last-modified and this repo in Tools → Plugin Update Manager, and the update will appear in the WordPress admin like any other.
• By hand: download dw-last-modified.zip from the latest release and install it through Plugins → Add New → Upload.

The plugin header sets Update URI, which stops WordPress core from offering an unrelated wordpress.org plugin as an update.

Usage

// Template tags.
the_dw_last_modified();
$html = get_the_dw_last_modified( 'wp-table' );

[dw-last-modified]
[dw-last-modified format="%date% %sep% %time% %author%"]

Format placeholders are %date%, %time%, %sep% and %author%. The modifying user is only in the default format for the three wp-admin contexts (wp-table, publish-box, messages) so that the shortcode and template tags do not publish your editors' names on the front-end — add %author% to the format yourself if you want it there.

Filters: dw_last_modified_defaults, dw_last_modified_output, dw_last_modified_author_output, dw_last_modified_author. See readme.txt for the full reference, including which pre-rename name each one replaces.

The modifying user comes from the core _edit_last post meta, which WordPress only writes when a post is saved through wp-admin — REST, WP-CLI and importer edits have no user to show.

Development

composer install
bin/install-wp-tests.sh <db-name> <db-user> <db-pass> [db-host] [wp-version]
composer test

db-host accepts a socket as localhost:/path/to/mysqld.sock. CI runs the suite on PHP 7.4, 8.2 and 8.3 against WordPress latest.

Releasing

Driven by release-please from Conventional Commits on main:

1. Commit with a conventional prefix (feat:, fix:, dev:, perf:).
2. release-please opens a release PR bumping .release-please-manifest.json and CHANGELOG.md. bin/update-plugin-version.sh then syncs that version into the plugin header, the DW_LAST_MODIFIED_VERSION constant and readme.txt.
3. Merging the PR tags the release, and bin/build.sh attaches dw-last-modified.zip to it.

Tags do not carry a v prefix. The zip contains a top-level dw-last-modified/ directory, which is what the WordPress plugin updater expects.

Credits and licence

DW Last Modified began as a fork of Last Modified Timestamp by Evan Mattson, and has been maintained independently by DigiWatts since 1.1.0 — which also merged in Last Modified By. Version 1.2.0 renamed the plugin; every pre-rename shortcode, template tag, class name, filter and CSS class still works.

Copyright 2011–2013 Evan Mattson. Copyright 2026 Erik Mitchell / DigiWatts.

Licensed under the GPL-2.0-or-later.