Simple Editor Control – File History, Diff & Restore

You edited functions.php in Appearance → Theme File Editor, saved, and the site went down. Or a plugin file was quietly modified and you want to know who, when, and what exactly changed.

Simple Editor Control records every save made through the WordPress theme and plugin file editors — automatically, with zero setup. For each save it stores the complete file, compressed and sealed with a SHA-256 integrity hash, along with the user and the timestamp.

History you can trust

• Every revision stores the full file content — revisions are independent, so your history can never drift or corrupt.
• The very first tracked save also captures the file as it was before the change, so the original state is always recoverable.
• A save is only recorded after WordPress actually wrote it. Saves that core refused or rolled back (fatal PHP error) never pollute the history.
• SHA-256 integrity check on every read: a corrupted revision is detected and refused, never silently written to disk.

Diffs worthy of git

• Real Myers diff algorithm (jsdiff) rendered by diff2html — side-by-side or unified, with syntax awareness.
• Instant context switching (0 to 25 lines) with no server round-trip.
• Added/removed line counts on every revision in the timeline.
• Compare any two revisions of a file, not just consecutive ones.

Restore without fear

• One-click restore of any revision (arm, then confirm — no accidental clicks).
• Before overwriting, the current on-disk content is snapshotted as a new revision: a restore can never lose data, even changes made outside WordPress.
• When restoring a PHP file of an active plugin or theme, the site is probed afterwards; if a fatal error is detected, the previous content is put back automatically. No white screen.
• Restore requires the same capabilities as the core editors, and is disabled entirely when DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT is set — the audit trail never becomes a policy bypass.

Respectful of your site

• Old revisions are pruned automatically (configurable, default: last 100 per file).
• Deactivation keeps your history; deletion removes everything, including database tables.
• All third-party libraries are bundled with human-readable sources: jsdiff (BSD-3-Clause) and diff2html (MIT).