In an ideal world, there wouldn’t ever be a problem that needed debugging. But in the real world, you’ll almost surely encounter WordPress site problems that call for a closer examination.
WordPress has a built-in debug mode to assist you in doing that, and you can also discover helpful third-party tools to help with debugging WordPress.
WP Debug: What Does It Do?
Both plugins and themes, as well as the WordPress core program, are developed in PHP.
By displaying all PHP errors, alerts, and warnings, WordPress debug mode can assist you in figuring out what’s wrong with your site.
Whenever there is a problem (even if it isn’t producing any immediate issues), you will get messages similar to this after you enable debug mode:
WP_DEBUG a WordPress website error example
The issue can then be resolved or reported to your developer, theme, or plugin developer.
The WordPress Debug Log: What Is It?
You’ll get messages similar to the one in the previous example when you enable WordPress to debug mode on their own, but they won’t be saved anywhere.
You can also activate the WordPress debug log to record all of those warnings and faults to a file on your server if you wish to save them.
To write the log to a different location on your server, you may alternatively provide a custom file path.
If you don’t want errors on your sites to be publicly shown but instead store them to the log-in HTML, The WP DEBUG DISPLAY constant may also be used to maintain debug mode while disabling message display on your website.
How to Make WordPress Debuggable?
Does WordPress require that debugging be enabled? This is true when troubleshooting any aspect of your website, including WPForms and any plugins or WordPress themes.
When adding custom code like PHP or JavaScript, you may need to check for any potential issues in your code, your theme, other plugins, or even on the server.
WordPress debug, when enabled, will record any issues found on your website. This might help you identify the problem’s root cause or learn more about any potential issues on your website.
Activating debugging in WordPress
Please carry out the actions listed below to allow debugging on your website.
1) Locating the wp-config.php file
Debugging for WordPress is disabled by default. You’ll need to access your site’s files using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or your server’s cPanel in order to enable it.
You may also just install a plugin, such as WP File Manager, to obtain access to your server files from the WordPress admin area.
2) Editing the wp-config.php file
Once your site files are open, you’ll need to open wp-config.php for editing.
The root folder on your server is where you’ll find this file.
For WordPress debugging, access the wp-config file. This file includes configuration options unique to your site, including database details and, possibly, customizations made by your hosting company. You must locate this line of code for debugging.
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