Decaywatcher

A WordPress plugin that detects decaying content by tracking traffic snapshots, scoring posts, and surfacing actionable fixes before rankings drop.

Problem

WordPress site owners publish blog posts and pages, then forget about them. Over time, traffic drops as content becomes outdated — old keywords, stale statistics, broken structures, missing internal links.

Most site owners have no way to know which posts are decaying until Google Search Console shows a significant ranking drop, by which time it is often too late.

There is no existing WordPress plugin that proactively identifies decaying content, scores it, and suggests specific actionable fixes before the damage is done.

Solution

Content Decay Detector runs a weekly background scan across all published posts, compares traffic snapshots over time, assigns a decay score to each post, and surfaces rule-based suggestions for improvement.

Features

• Automatic weekly scanning via WP Cron — processes posts in batches to avoid timeouts
• Decay scoring (0–100) — compares current traffic against previous snapshot
• Rule-based suggestions — refresh title, add internal links, update statistics, expand content
• Admin report table — sortable by decay score with score range filter
• Dashboard widget — top 5 most decayed posts at a glance
• Weekly email digest — sends flagged posts to admin email automatically
• REST API endpoint — GET /wp-json/content-decay/v1/reports for external integrations
• Gutenberg sidebar panel — shows decay score inside the block editor for the post being edited
• Bulk actions — mark posts as reviewed or exclude from scanning

Installation

1. Download or clone the repository into wp-content/plugins/content-decay-detector/
2. Run composer install to install PHP dependencies
3. Run npm install && npm run build to compile JavaScript assets
4. Activate the plugin from WP Admin → Plugins
5. The wp_decay_snapshots database table is created automatically on activation

Requirements

• WordPress 6.0 or higher
• PHP 8.0 or higher
• Composer

Configuration

Navigate to WP Admin → Settings → Decay Detector to configure:

Usage

Viewing the Report

Navigate to WP Admin → Tools → Decay Report to see all flagged posts.

• Decay Score — colored badge showing post health (green = healthy, red = decaying)
• Suggestions — specific actionable fixes for each post
• Filter — filter posts by score range using the min/max filter form
• Bulk actions — select multiple posts and mark as reviewed or exclude from scanning

Dashboard Widget

The WordPress admin dashboard shows a Content Decay widget with the top 5 most decayed posts and a link to the full report.

Gutenberg Panel

When editing a post in the block editor, open the Content Decay panel from the sidebar to see the current decay score and suggestions for that specific post.

REST API

The plugin exposes a REST API endpoint for external integrations:

GET /wp-json/content-decay/v1/reports

Authentication: Requires a logged-in user with manage_options capability. Pass the nonce via X-WP-Nonce header.

Parameters:

Example response:

[
  {
    "post_id": 42,
    "post_title": "10 Tips for Better SEO",
    "post_url": "https://example.com/seo-tips/",
    "decay_score": 23,
    "traffic_score": 187,
    "snapshot_date": "2026-06-01",
    "suggestions": [
      "Refresh the post title with current keywords.",
      "Update statistics and outdated information in the content.",
      "Add internal links to related posts."
    ],
    "is_reviewed": false
  }
]

Running Tests

vendor/bin/phpunit

All tests are located in the tests/ directory and cover:

• Decay score calculation logic
• Settings defaults and validation
• Boundary conditions and edge cases

Code Standards

The plugin follows the WordPress coding standard via PHPCS:

vendor/bin/phpcs
vendor/bin/phpcbf

Zero errors and zero warnings on the WordPress-Extra ruleset.

Architecture

The plugin follows a single-responsibility OOP architecture with PSR-4 autoloading via Composer. No procedural code outside the main plugin file entry point.

Database Schema

One custom table: wp_decay_snapshots

Roadmap

• [ ] Google Search Console API integration for real traffic data
• [ ] Per-post decay history chart
• [ ] Slack notification integration
• [ ] WP-CLI command to trigger manual scan
• [ ] Multisite support

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE for details.

Author

Built by Gauri as a portfolio project claimed from the WPFolks Ideas board.