The free WP Health Check plugin is a relatively new arrival, having been introduced a few months ago by “The WordPress.org community”. It has a remarkably polarized set of user reviews – divided almost exclusively between 5s (“Works great!”) and 1s (“Warning! Broke my site!”). The authors strongly urge to backup your site before installing and using this plugin – always a good idea.
For me, the plugin works perfectly and is a superb addition to my WP troubleshooting toolbox. Among it’s features …
- On the Health Check tab, “The health check shows critical information about your WordPress configuration and items that require your attention.” In my case it seems to show a couple of false positives, but for an extremely useful free plugin I can live with that.
- On the Debug Information tab, a ton of detailed data. Most of it I don’t understand, but if I ever need it I’m sure I will be very happy it’s there.
- Most important – the Troubleshooting tab. A standard, basic WP troubleshooting step is to deactivate all plugins and switch to the default 20-something theme. This has gotta be confusing to anyone who happens to be visiting my site at the time. The appearance of my site completely changes, and a bunch of theme and plugin-dependent stuff stops working. The Health Check plugin solves that problem by deactivating plugins and switching themes just for me – site visitors continue to see the normal, functioning site. I can selectively turn on specific plugins and my usual theme as I troubleshoot.
- On the PHP Information tab – lots more detailed data.
- I especially love the Tools tab. I can verify the integrity of all WP core files – an important step in my periodic maintenance to be confident I have not been hacked. I can also verify that wp-mail is working.
Reminder – backup your site before installing and using this plugin. It works perfectly for me but has broken some sites.
