Changelog

Release date: 8 October 2026

Fixed

• Settings field labels were not linked to their fields, so clicking a label did not focus the field and screen readers did not announce the label.
• Options_API::update_option() and Options_API::delete_option() failed with a PHP error when the stored settings option was not an array.

Full Changelog: v3.2.0...v3.2.1

Changelog

Release date: 10 September 2026
Release post: https://webberzone.com/announcements/auto-close-v3-2/

Added

• Added WP-CLI commands for status, settings, maintenance runs, comments, pings, pingbacks, revisions, close dates, and cron.
• Added age- and retention-aware revision pruning with a 90-day default cutoff and the acc_revisions_prune_limit and acc_revisions_prune_cutoff filters.
• Independent per-post-type age overrides for closing comments and pingbacks/trackbacks, alongside the existing global age.
• An optional approved-comment count threshold: comments close once a post reaches the configured count, in addition to the age rule.
• A read-only Preview changes option on the Tools page for the closing algorithm, pingback/trackback deletion, and revision deletion, showing matching counts, scope, and a sample of affected posts before you run them.
• An AutoClose Status panel on the Tools page showing scheduling health, the next run, and the latest run's outcome, with a Repair schedule action.
• An on-demand Configuration Report on the Tools page covering effective settings, exception counts, close-date and reopen-window counts, and revision policies, without post content, comment text, or credentials.
• Guidance on the Settings General tab explaining what stays and what stops if the plugin is deactivated.

Changed

• Scheduled revision cleanup now respects each post's retention limit and age cutoff; autosaves remain protected and the Tools delete-all action remains explicit.
• Added lifecycle reconciliation for scheduled close dates and labeled cron schedule times as UTC.
• Improved bulk maintenance with supported public post-type scopes and truthful no-op and partial results.
• Migrated legacy close discussion statuses to WordPress's canonical closed value once per site.
• Per-post close dates no longer schedule one cron event per post. A single hourly autoclose_close_dates_event sweep applies every due date, so the number of scheduled events no longer grows with the number of close dates — on a large site the old behaviour could push megabytes into the autoloaded cron option and slow every request. Existing per-post events are removed automatically on upgrade, close dates themselves are unaffected, and a date now closes at the first sweep after its time rather than to the exact minute. Use acc_close_dates_recurrence to sweep more often.
• Preserved existing revision settings and added an admin notice explaining the new cleanup policy.

Fixed

• Close-date and revision-restore updates no longer reopen closed comments.
• Fixed close-date results, date controls, DST validation, and discussion age cutoff calculations.
• Revision deletion now removes orphaned metadata and term relationships.
• Fixed stale caches, cache invalidation notifications, and per-site cron notification counts.
• Fixed the fortnightly and monthly maintenance recurrences, which were selectable but never registered, so choosing either scheduled no maintenance event at all. Sites on either setting should confirm a next run on the Tools page.
• Drafts, auto-drafts, and other unpublished posts are no longer closed, so a post is never published with its discussion already closed. The eligible statuses can be adjusted with the new acc_close_post_statuses filter.
• Posts with an empty post_date_gmt no longer bypass the configured age cutoff.
• Activation now schedules the first maintenance run at the next occurrence of the configured time instead of a time that has already passed today.
• A repeatedly failing close-date restoration now stops rescheduling itself instead of retrying every minute.
• A failed pingback/trackback deletion query is now reported as a failure instead of as zero deletions.

Changelog

• Bug fixes:
  • Fixed an incorrect early translation loading notice in WordPress 6.7 and later by initializing admin components on the init action.

Full Changelog: v3.1.1...v3.1.2

Changelog

• Bug fixes:
  • Plugin re-activation now correctly re-schedules the cron job if the scheduler was previously enabled. Previously, the cron remained unscheduled until settings were manually re-saved.
  • Fixed per-post close date scheduling: when both a comments date and a pings date were set on the same post, only the first event was registered. Comments and pings events are now scheduled as distinct cron entries and both fire correctly.
  • Fixed date comparison in the comment/ping closing query to use UTC time against post_date_gmt, preventing posts from being closed at the wrong time on servers where the PHP timezone differs from UTC.

Full Changelog: v3.1.0...v3.1.1

Release post: https://webberzone.com/announcements/auto-close-v3-1-0/

• New features:

  • Exclude posts in specific categories, tags, or any taxonomy term from having comments or pingbacks/trackbacks closed.
  • Reopen comments automatically when a published post is saved or updated, with a configurable number of days before they are closed again by the cron.
  • Email summary notification after each scheduled cron run, showing the number of comments closed, pings closed, and revisions deleted.

• Bug fixes:

  • Fixed undefined variable warnings when processing taxonomy term exclusions.
  • Fixed Settings API repeater fields: form submission, hidden input names, and sanitization with row ID lookup.

• Modifications:

  • Update Settings API and other reusable classes in line with the latest WebberZone plugins.
  • Email summary now uses an HTML template for improved readability.
  • Term exclusion fields now use an autocomplete search (Tom Select) instead of manual ID entry.

Full Changelog: 3.0.0...3.1.0

What's New

Release post: https://webberzone.com/announcements/auto-close-v3-0-0/

Completely rewritten the plugin to use autoloading, namespaces and classes.

• Features:

  • Added block ping URLs feature and self-pings feature.
  • Introduced a new meta box allowing users to schedule the closure of comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks for the current post.

• Bug fixes:

  • Fixed PHP error/warnings about loading translations too early.

What's Changed

• Complete plugin rewrite to use classes by @ajaydsouza in #12

Full Changelog: v2.2.0...3.0.0

Release post: https://webberzone.com/blog/auto-close-v2-2-0/

• Enhancements:
  • The comment count for the post will be updated when deleting Pingbacks/Trackbacks
  • Settings page now uses the latest version of the WebberZone Settings_API class

Release post: https://webberzone.com/blog/auto-close-v2-1-0/

Features:

• New revisions tab with settings to control the number of revisions by post type
• New button in Tools page to delete all revisions

This is a major update to AutoClose. The plugin file has been renamed from ald-autoclose.php to autoclose.php which will cause WordPress to deactivate the plugin when upgraded. You will need to activate this again from the Plugins page.

• Features:

  • New Tools page with several buttons to open, close and delete comments, pingbacks and trackbacks. You can find the link in the Settings page under the main header
  • New button to delete all pingbacks and trackbacks in the Tools page
  • Activating the plugin on Multisite should upgrade settings from v1.x
  • Uninstalling the plugin on Multisite will delete the settings from all sites

• Enhancements:

  • Migrated options to the Settings API

• Modifications:

  • Main plugin file has been renamed to autoclose.php
  • Cron hook renamed from ald_acc_hook to acc_cron_hook

For older changes, refer to changelog.txt

• Fixed: Bug where comments on attachments did not get closed
• Fixed: JavaScript bug when saving options in Admin area