Using Health Check to Debug Your WordPress Site

General Documentation

Using Health Check to Debug Your WordPress Site

As plugins, themes, and WordPress itself, are constantly being updated, you are likely to encounter a problem with a plugin or your theme at some point. But it can sometimes be difficult to figure out which plugin (or theme) is causing the error. One way to do this is to deactivate all of your plugins, and then activate them one-by-one until you encounter the problem.

But doing this can break your site!

Deactivating plugins or your theme can impact on your site, causing disruptions for your users. So you don’t want to do this on a live site. Instead, we recommend using the Health Check plugin by The WordPress.org Community. This plugin can help you debug your site and determine whether the error is being caused by a plugin or theme. Plus it can do this without interrupting your live site, allowing visitors to continue using your site as they normally would.

Below we take a step-by-step look at how to use Health Check to debug your WordPress site.

Step 1: Install and activate the Health Check plugin

From your WordPress menu, goto Plugins –> Add New. Search for the Health Check plugin (make sure it is the correct one, by The WordPress.org Community). Install and activate the plugin.

Health Check Plugin

Once installed, you’ll see a troubleshooting option next to each plugin on you Plugins page. (Clicking on any one of these links from your plugins page will enable troubleshooting mode.)

Health Check troubleshoot

You’ll also find a Troubleshooting tab in your Site Health tool. Site Health is located in your Tools, but you should also be able to find a Site Health panel on your WordPress dashboard.

Step 2: Enable Troubleshooting Mode

In Troubleshooting Mode, users will still see and be able to use your live site. As you’re logged in, however, you will see the site in troubleshooting mode. This means that, for you only, the site has disabled all plugins and themes, and has reverted back to a default theme.

To enable this mode goto Tools –> Site Health –> Troubleshooting and click on Enable Troubleshooting Mode. Note that once enabled, you will either need to log out or disable this mode manually.

Troubleshooting mode in Site Health

Step 3: Troubleshoot Your Site

After enabling Troubleshooting Mode, you’ll be redirected to a panel on your dashboard. From here, you can troubleshoot your site by enabling one plugin at a time, or by switching to a different theme.

Enable plugins or themes using Health Check

We recommend you open the problematic page in a new tab so you can easily enable plugins one at a time, and simply refresh the problematic page to see if you still have the problem.

After troubleshooting mode is enabled, make sure our plugin is enabled first. This means, if you are having a plugin conflict with our plugin FooGallery, then make sure FooGallery is enabled and working correctly on the problematic page. If it is not working as expected, and it is the only plugin enabled, then make sure to switch to another default WordPress theme. If it then works after switching themes, then contact us with these details so that we can troubleshoot further and provide advice. If the page still does not work after switching to another theme, then also get in touch so that we can help.

If the plugin is working as expected, then continue to enable each of your other listed plugins, one at a time. After each plugin has been enabled, switch to the tab with the problematic page, and refresh. If the page does not work as expected, then the last plugin you enabled is causing the conflict. Please contact us with these details so that we can investigate further.

Step 4: Disable Troubleshooting Mode

Once you have determined where the error is coming from, remember to disable troubleshooting. You can do this by clicking on the Disable Troubleshooting Mode button in the Health Check panel. Your site will return to normal for yourself, and continue as before for your users.

You can also check out this video on GiveWP about using the Health Check plugin.

If you discover that you are having an issue with FooGallery or FooBox, please contact us with the relevant details.