Advance Custom HTML – Show Off Code Snippets with Live Preview

71 Quality Score

Active Installs

18/30

At roughly 10,000 active installs and an unusually high 30% weighting boost, popularity lands at a modest 60 and trails the top alternatives by two orders of magnitude.

Update Freshness

25/25

Maintenance scores a perfect 100 thanks to a recent update on 2026-07-05 and tested compatibility with WordPress 7.0, signalling an actively maintained codebase.

User Rating

6/15

The user rating of 50 out of 100 from only 4 reviews is a yellow flag, indicating mixed or unproven reception from a tiny sample.

Support Health

8/15

Support health scores 50 with zero threads opened and zero resolved, which is neutral at best and offers no evidence the author responds to issues.

WP Compatibility

15/15

Compatibility hits 100 because it declares support for WordPress 7.0 and requires only PHP 7.1 and WordPress 6.6, covering a broad range of hosts.

Scores higher than 26% of indexed plugins

About

Display HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP & Python code snippets in WordPress with live preview, syntax highlighting and a copy button.

Active Installs 10k+

Rating ★★½ 2.5/5

Last Updated 2026-09-14 4:52am GMT

Requires WordPress 6.5+

Tested Up To 7.1

Requires PHP 7.1+

✓ No known vulnerabilities

What It Does

Advance Custom HTML is a Gutenberg block that lets you paste HTML, CSS, PHP, and other code into posts and pages with live preview and syntax highlighting on the front end. It is geared toward displaying code visually, not executing site-wide PHP or managing header and footer snippets. Think of it as a teaching or documentation tool rather than a functional code injection plugin.

Who It's For

This plugin fits bloggers, tutorial writers, course creators, and developer portfolios who want to embed readable, styled code samples inside posts and pages. It is also useful for small sites that occasionally need to drop in a styled embed or custom HTML chunk without installing a heavier snippet manager.

Who Should Skip It

If you need to run PHP globally, inject scripts into headers or footers, or manage reusable code snippets across your site, this plugin is the wrong tool and a heavier alternative like WPCode or Code Snippets will save you time. Sites with no plans to display code to visitors should also skip it.

The Bottom Line

Advance Custom HTML is a narrow, well-maintained display tool with a respectable 71.41 overall score but thin user feedback and a tiny install base. It is a reasonable pick if displaying styled code snippets in posts is your main goal, but most WordPress users will be better served by the larger, better-rated alternatives listed above. Treat it as a specialty block, not a general code manager.

Pick WPCode if you actually need to run PHP, JavaScript, or tracking snippets site-wide, since it has 3,000,000 installs and a 97.55 quality score far beyond this plugin.

Spectra Legacy – Gutenberg Blocks 95/100

Choose Spectra if you want a full Gutenberg block library with 1,000,000 installs and 94.82 quality, rather than a single-purpose HTML block.

Code Snippets 88/100

Pick Code Snippets for managing reusable PHP and CSS snippets that run across your site, backed by 1,000,000 installs and an 88.47 quality score.

Breadcrumb NavXT 88/100

Breadcrumb NavXT is unrelated to code display but illustrates the install ceiling mature single-purpose plugins reach, useful context for comparing this plugin's reach.

PDF Embedder 86/100

PDF Embedder is similarly a display-focused embed plugin with 86.13 quality, a better choice if your real need is presenting PDFs rather than code.