While troubleshooting an issue I had with a Jetpack installation, I came across two handy little plugins, the one called Health Check, and the other WP Crontrol. Both these plugins provide you with invaluable insight into your WordPress hosting environment and installation.
Health Check
With this plugin, you’ll be able to perform a number of checks on your WordPress install to detect common configuration errors and known issues.
It can check your PHP and MySQL versions, some extensions which are needed or may improve WordPress, and it also checks that the WordPress.org services are accessible to your site.
One of the neatest features of this plugin is that it has a troubleshooting mode that lets you “deactivate” all plugins (except Must Use plugins) for your current logged in session while all other users will see you site as usual.
For when you need to provide information to someone trying it help you solve a problem with your theme, plugins, or your WordPress installation itself, there is also a debug section, which allows you to gather information about your WordPress and server configuration.
Health Check was created by WordPress heavyweights Peter Westwood, Gary Pendergast, and L. J. Marius and can be found in the WordPress repository.
WP Crontrol
The WP Crontrol plugin allows you to view and control what’s happening in the WP-Cron system. This plugin lets you:
- View all cron events along with their arguments, frequency, when they are next due, and a few other bits and pieces.
- Edit, run or delete any cron events.
- Add new cron events.
- Bulk delete cron events.
- Add, edit, and delete any custom cron schedules.
- It will also show you a warning message if your cron system doesn’t appear to be working.
In case you’re interested, I solved my JetPack issue by manually running the jp_sitemap_cron_hook to for Jetpack to generate the sitemaps that I was too impatient to wait for.
Wrapping It Up
Go ahead, let curiosity get the better of you and install these two plugins and get some insight into the inner workings of your WordPress site. Once you’re done, go ahead and uninstall these little critters, favorite them on the WordPress repository, and check them out the next time you have any trouble with your WordPress installation.
Note: If you don’t have a reliable backout of your site, tread carefully when you work with any plugin that might alter your site in any way.
Photo by Hush Naidoo on Unsplash
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