Home » Troubleshooting Guides » How to Troubleshoot WordPress Websites with Health Check
By day I’m a tech support goddess troubleshooting plugin issues for WordPress websites. By night, I’m a mom, wife, and WordPress enthusiast. If you haven’t heard of the Health Check plugin I highly recommend checking it out! It is a must-have plugin that is part of my troubleshooting toolbelt.
Why should I use it?
- Have you ever experienced a 500 error that brought your site down and you weren’t sure why?
- You updated WordPress or a plugin only to find it is no longer working as it was before the update.
- You don’t have access to a staging site, and you worry you will lose customers while troubleshooting.
- You have contacted support, but you need this problem solved… YESTERDAY!
If so these are all reasons to install the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin.
How do I use it to troubleshoot plugins?
- Navigate to https://wordpress.org/plugins/health-check/ and click ‘Download‘ and install UPLOAD PLUGIN or navigate to your Plugins > Add New > type ‘Health Check & Troubleshooting’ > click ‘Install Now‘
- Navigate to Tools > Troubleshooting > Site Health > Troubleshooting > click ‘Enable Troubleshooting Mode’
- All plugins are temporarily disabled in this state, so start with enabling the plugin you are having issues with and then check your site. If the error has resolved it’s self that means the plugin you are testing isn’t causing the error ( good news! )
- Next, enable each plugin one-by-one until you experience the error. Doing so means you have found the plugin conflict.
- Disable troubleshooting mode by navigating to the WordPress Admin bar or Dashboard and clicking, ‘Disable Troubleshooting Mode‘
- Now that you are out of troubleshooting mode, temporarily disable the problem plugin and decide whether you want to reach out to the plugin developer for additional support or find another plugin solution altogether.
How do I use it to troubleshoot themes?
- Navigate to Tools > Troubleshooting > Site Health > Troubleshooting > click ‘Enable Troubleshooting Mode’.
- Navigate to WordPress Admin bar > Troubleshooting Mode > Themes > choose the theme you want to test.
- If you weren’t able to rule out a plugin conflict there may be an issue with your theme. Enabling an alternate theme temporarily will assist you in tracking down the error without causing issues for your visitors.
Already built into WordPress
Status
The Site Health status shows you ways that you can improve your website. This section automatically comes with your WordPress installation. Typically these are suggestions and don’t necessarily mean anything is wrong.
Info
Here you can find information about your site. For example, have you ever wondered what version of PHP you are running or how to find out what your memory limit is? Those can be found under the ‘Server‘ dropdown.
Server Tab ( with the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin )
Comes with the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin
Troubleshooting
This is where you enable ‘Troubleshooting Mode’ by clicking the ‘Troubleshooting Mode‘ button. Doing so allows you to test plugins, and troubleshoot issues with your site all without causing an interruption to your users. Allowing you to turn your site into a makeshift “staging” site that only you can see.
Tools
Are you having problems with your site sending emails? If so you can send us a test email that will invoke the wp_mail() function. Using this feature is a lot easier than installing an additional mail checker plugin, so that alone is worth it. If you need to check plugin compatibility this is also the right place. Checking the compatibility will let you know, the minimum version of PHP and WordPress that is required for your plugin to run.
