Debugging with the Health Check plugin

When something breaks, it’s hard to tell which plugin or theme is causing the error. One way to find out is to deactivate all plugins and then reactivate them one by one until you hit the problem, but that can break or disrupt your live site.

Instead, I recommend using the Health Check plugin, available in the wordpress.org repository:

Health Check & Troubleshooting

1. Install the plugin. (Go to Plugins → Add New → search for “Health Check” and install it.)
2. Activate the plugin.
3. Follow the troubleshooting steps below.

Troubleshooting

Go to Tools → Site Health → Troubleshooting and click Enable. To exit troubleshooting mode, you have to disable it manually from the admin bar dropdown at the top, or log out.

Note

Troubleshooting mode is now on. It has no effect on your site’s visitors — they’ll browse it as usual — but for you it will look as if you’d just installed WordPress for the first time.

In the WP dashboard you can enable individual plugins or themes, which lets you find out what’s causing your site’s odd behavior. Keep in mind that any settings changes you make are preserved even after you turn off troubleshooting mode.

Now enable only the plugins you need to test or debug (for example WooCommerce + its extensions), and keep the default WP theme.

If everything works, it’s probably a conflict with your other plugins. Re-enable them one by one and find out when the site or the feature breaks again.