WordPress Playground, the free tool that runs a full WordPress site inside your browser, can now boot 55 different versions of WordPress, going all the way back to version 0.7 from May 2003, the project’s first public release.
What changed
Automattic contributor Fellyph Cintra announced the update on the Make WordPress Playground blog. A new “Include older versions” checkbox in the Playground settings panel expands the version picker to show every release, labeled with its code name alongside the version number.
Getting old WordPress versions to run in a browser took real engineering work. Playground compiled PHP 5.2.17, the runtime early WordPress needs, to WebAssembly so it can run without installing anything. The tool now pairs the right PHP version to the right WordPress release automatically: versions 0.7 through 4.9 run on PHP 5.2, versions 5.0 through 6.2 run on PHP 7.4, and anything from 6.3 onward uses Playground’s modern default.
Each version boots in a couple of seconds, with no server setup, no database configuration, and no need to keep old PHP installs around on your own computer.
Why this matters for site owners
If you maintain a site that’s been running on WordPress for years, or you’re helping a client migrate off a very old install, this gives you a fast way to see exactly how that older version behaved. Cintra pointed to a few practical uses: reproducing an old compatibility report tied to a specific WordPress version, checking whether a plugin still works before you decide to drop support for an older release, and comparing how the admin screens and editor looked before the block editor and REST API existed.
It’s also a safer way to explore an unfamiliar legacy site before touching it. Instead of guessing how an old WordPress install behaves, you can boot the exact version in a browser tab and see it directly.
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