Debug Bar is a widely trusted tool in debugging WordPress sites via the WP Admin. This plugin is great for having quick access to query, cache, and many other forms of debugging information. The tool is displayed in the top admin bar of the site so that you have quick access to debug information on both the front and back end of your site.
There are many options if you want to dive deeper into the debugging capabilities:
- Enable tracking of PHP Warnings and notices by having `WP_DEBUG` enabled. This makes it easy to identify problems in your code.
- When SAVEQUERIES is enabled, MYSQL queries are exposed and tracked. This is great for identifying performance issues in your site or when building custom WordPress functionality.
To enable these options, add the following code to your wp-config.php file:
define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, true );
define( ‘SAVEQUERIES’, true );
How does this help you?
Trusted by WP Engine and used across our business functions, this plugin serves as a quick way to diagnose issues with WordPress installs. At WP Engine, our customer experience team often uses this tool to diagnose reported issues as part of our commitment to our customers. If you’d like to speed up your support interactions, having this plugin installed is a great way to have a shared view into the issues you may be facing as we work together with you to solve them.
Debug Bar Add Ons
There are a number of add-ons for Debug Bar to help better diagnose issues in a variety of focuses. Keep in mind, before using these add-ons you will need to have Debug installed.
Adds a panel to the Debug Bar that shows registered shortcodes for the current page. This add-on will also show which function or method is called by the shortcode and any additional information about the shortcode such as description, parameters available, and whether or not it is self-closing. You can also identify with this too each page or post that the shortcode is used on.
Debug Bar Constants adds three panels to the Debug Bar that display the defined constants available for the given request. This includes WP Constants, WP Class Constants and also general PHP Constants.
Debug Bar Post Types adds a panel to the Debug Bar that gives detailed information about the registered post types for your site.
Debug Bar Cron adds information about WP scheduled events to a new panel in the Debug Bar. Once installed, you will have reference to how many scheduled events are set for your site, if any are currently running, the time of the next event, and more. This is great for oversight into every single regularly running function in your site. Notice issues with your site only at certain times of the day? This could provide insight into what is running during that time.
Debug Bar Actions and Filters Addon
This add-on makes two more tabs available in the Debug Bar to display Actions and Filters attached to the current page. The Actions tab displays the actions hooked to current request while the Filters tab displays the filter tags (along with the functions attached to it with respective priority.)
Debug Bar Transients adds information about WordPress Transients to a panel in the Debug Bar. Once installed, you will have access to a count of how many existing transients are in the current request as well as more detailed information about those transients. An option is also given to delete certain transients.
Debug Bar List Script & Style Dependencies
Lists scripts and styles that are loaded, in which order they’re loaded, and what dependencies exist.
This will log and profile remote requests made through the HTTP API. The Remote Requests add-on is a great way to monitor request methods on the given page. This is handy for seeing how fast your external requests are taking and how many of them are happening on a page. Pro tip: With this add-on installed, you can add `?dbrr_full=1` to any of your site’s URLs to get additional information, including all request parameters and a full dump of the response with headers.