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How to Debug WordPress Problems

by | Aug 12, 2016 | Developer | 0 comments

The same questions come up time and time again online about how to debug WordPress problems. The challenge with WordPress and the web servers they live on is that there are an awful lot of moving parts, of which one or more of these moving parts can be the root cause of the problem. Unfortunately there is no handy traffic light system which says what is working well and what is causing problems as problems can be intermittent, appear random or only occur under specific circumstances. This being said, there is always a logical way to debug WordPress problems to identify what the root cause of the problem actually is.

 

Identify What is Actually Happening and When

This is extremely important as this will help you to understand where the problem actually lies. Is what you are experiencing really a WordPress problem or something web hosting related or something email related or something else completely?

 

Check your Server Raw Access Logs

See what is happening on your web server when you are experiencing the issues. This will help to identify if there are any other external items that could be the potential cause of the issues or if this is indeed an isolated incident.

 

Check your Server Error Logs

Has anything been resulting in a recorded error on your web server that can help you identify the problem that is happening? Have a good rummage around here to see if you can spot anything and tie this back to the times and dates when the problems are occurring.

 

Check your Server Monitoring Software

Tools such as Munin and New Relic are invaluable when debugging issues, they can help you identify what is currently happening on your web server. This enables you to see if the problem is indeed WordPress related or an issue that is being caused elsewhere.

 

Check your Server Firewall

Make sure your IP address isn’t being blocked for some reason. This can sometimes be triggered when you have entered an incorrect password on multiple occasions.

 

Check your Cloud Based Firewall

As above.

 

Check your WordPress Firewall

If you have a WordPress level firewall installed, then it is possible that your IP address / user account is being blocked here too. You’ll likely need to check via phpMyAdmin to view this data to see if you can find your IP address in the database for locked users or accounts. Depending on the plugin you are using for this, this data could be anywhere. Check the documents for the plugin you are using to figure out where this information could be. If your IP address is being blocked, it’s usually safe to delete this row and you should regain access. Again, make sure you know what you are doing before you go deleting things though as you may delete a whole host of incorrect things depending on how everything has been set up.

 

Check if the Problem is Just You

http://isup.me will tell you if your website is up or if it is just you experiencing the problem.

 

Check in Another Web Browser

Often issues can be browser specific, so check on a different web browser that you have installed.

 

Check on Another IP Address

Use your mobile phone, with WiFi turned off, to access the website. Is the issue still being caused now?

 

Check Google Analytics

Is there anything happening at the time when the issues are occurring? This could help you narrow down where the issue lies, for example if you suddenly receive a large spike in traffic which would show on the Real Time reports or on the hourly reports which could show out of the ordinary behaviour on the website.

 

Check Google Chrome Developer Tools

If the problem is occurring when you are either viewing a specific page or when you are logged in as a user or administrator, open the Google Chrome Developer Tools to see if any issues are being flagged in the console window. If there are any error being flagged here, this should give you an idea of where the problem may be coming from.

 

Compose Yourself

So far you have been gathering data about what is happening so you can make an informed decision about if you are certain the problem actually lies with WordPress or if it is somewhere else. Assuming you have identified that the problem is indeed WordPress related then continue reading.

 

Enable WP_Debug

Turn on wp_debug by adding the following line of code to your wp-config.php file;


define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );

Once turned on, this will flag any errors that are being caused by the themes, plugins or PHP files which need addressing. When you turn this setting on, both you and everyone using your website will be able to see the errors. So if you must do this on a live website, do it quickly and turn if off again by setting the value to false.


define( 'WP_DEBUG', false );

On poorly built WordPress websites with plugins purchased from theme market places and other less salubrious sources, this will flag up a whole host of errors. Take note of where these errors are being caused as this will help you to identify where the problem lies and ultimately what you need to do about resolving the issue.

While the WP_Debug option is great, it doesn’t do everything for you. Particularly on custom built systems with lots of custom code and functionality, you need something extra. This is the WordPress Debug Log. Firstly, add the following code to your functions.php file;

if (!function_exists('write_log')) {
function write_log ( $log )  {
if ( true === WP_DEBUG ) {
if ( is_array( $log ) || is_object( $log ) ) {
error_log( print_r( $log, true ) );
} else {
error_log( $log );
}
}
}
}

 

Then where ever in your code you feel that a problem lies, add the following code to check that this part of the code is actually being called;

write_log('THIS IS THE START OF MY CUSTOM DEBUG');

 

You’ll also need to make sure that you have the following settings turned on in your wp-config.php file;


define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );

define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );

define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );

 

Then when you start running through your system to check which bits are and aren’t working, you can view the data that is output into the debug.log file which is added to your Document Root for your WordPress installation.

 

Backup Your Setup

A full backup including database and files. So you can restore the site to it’s current broken, but functional, state if the following debugging ends up breaking things even more. This can happen when WordPress websites haven’t been built particularly well, so make sure you have a full backup. Even better, use a backup plugin which allows you to easily restore everything should you need to. It is a lot easier to restore backups when part of the task is automated.

 

Update Everything

WordPress Core, Themes and Plugins. Make sure absolutely everything is running the latest versions. Often problems are caused by outdated plugins which are either using deprecated PHP functions or making calls to 3rd party systems which have been updated since they were installed, or even conflicts between other Plugins, Themes or WordPress core that needs resolving. When you have updated everything, at least you know that everything should in theory be working correctly, assuming you are using well respected Themes and Plugins for WordPress and not poorly developed ones.

 

Disable All Plugins and Themes

This one is the one that on-one ever wants to do, particularly when debugging issues that are only happening on a live website and not on a development server. Unfortunately this is a required step in the process as this will help to identify what is causing the problem.

Firstly switch your Theme back to the latest version of the core WordPress theme such as 2016 and soon to be 2017. These themes have been built as near perfect examples of how Themes should be build, meaning that there are no issues contained within these themes which could be causing the issue. If the issue disappears when you do this, the problem lies with your theme. Contact the theme author to get it resolved so they can push an update out. It is important to note that on occasions, if your website has been built or customised incorrectly then it is possible that any custom CSS (for example if you have stored this in the JetPack plugin Edit CSS area) or other customisations you have made can actually disappear completely, which if this is a large website, then it’s going to take either yourself a good amount of time to resolve, or it’s going to cost you a lot of money to resolve paying someone to re-implement the different aspects properly.

If this doesn’t solve the problem, next, disable all plugins on your website. See if this solves the problem. If so, then it is one of the plugins you’re using which is causing the problem. Systematically re-activate the plugins you are using and check to see when the problem starts to happen again. As mentioned previously, some plugins will delete and customisations when they are deactivated which is annoying and causes more problems to resolve which can often take some time to re-implement some of the customisations. Good plugins don’t do this, bad plugins often do.

 

Check Server PHP Settings

As part of the process outlined above, on occasions the error lies with the web server, specifically the php.ini settings and configurations. There are various settings which are often causing the problems which include;

  • Max_execution_time
  • Memory_limit
  • Upload_max_filesize
  • Post_max_size

 

Check your WordPress PHP Memory Limit

In addition to the server settings, it is also possible to configure memory limits within WordPress itself. Check within the wp-config.php file to see if any arbitrary memory limits have been added which could be causing scripts to time out and produce errors. The line will look like the example below, likely with a different number included;


define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘64M’)

 

WordPress Debugging Plugins

There are also a few handy WordPress debugging plugins which can provide additional information including WordPress Query Monitor and WordPress P3 Plugin Performance Profiler. When you install these there are various debugging tools included which can help to identify where the root cause of the problem lies.

 

Check your .htaccess File

Sometimes this can become corrupted, either by someone who has access to the site messing around without knowing what they are doing, or, a plugin may have altered the file which is then causing problems.

 

Check your Database is Correct

You will at some point when working with WordPress come across the “Error establishing database connection” error which can be caused by multiple things. One thing is clear though, it’s an error connecting with the database.

Firstly, check your database credentials within the wp-config.php file to make sure they are correct.

Secondly, make sure that the MySQL daemon is running on your web server. Sometimes this can get a bit tangled in a knot and need a restart.

Thirdly, sometimes your WordPress database gets corrupted and needs to be fixed. To fix this, when you visit yourwebsite.com/wp-admin, you will see a message that your database needs to be repaired. Sometimes, you can go ahead and implement this straight away. Other times, you need to add the following code to your wp-config.php file;


define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);

Then visit yoursite.com/wp-admin/maint/repair.php to start the repair process. Be sure to remove this line of code once you have completed the process to prevent others from accessing the URL.

Should none of this work, speak with your web hosting company. On occasions, the maximum size of the database may have been reached or there is something gone really wrong with your database that WordPress cannot restore. All kinds of crazy things can happen and they will be able to identify the root cause of the issue.

 

Check File Permissions

If your issue appears to be related to file permissions, i.e. you cannot upload a plugin maybe or you’re having trouble uploading an image for example. Then check the file permissions on your web server to make sure that they are set correctly. And make sure to check the owner of the files too. For example, if you have restored a backup via SSH using a root user account, then the files you copy to a cPanel account for example will belong to that user and not the cPanel account user, meaning that you technically don’t have permission to do anything with them when you are trying to do so via your WordPress interface. This is rare, but worth checking.

 

Check that Maintenance Mode Hasn’t Got Stuck

If you have been updating WordPress core, Plugins or Themes and your maintenance mode has got stuck, it is likely that it has timed out and not been able to complete. What this means is that you’ll first need to identify why this has happened in the first place, check your error logs for details.

To get you back up and running though, login to your server via FTP, make sure hidden files . [dot] files are showing and you’ll likely see a .maintainence file. This is the file that WordPress adds when it is doing maintenance, which is then deleted at the end of the process. So if the process timed out, it didn’t complete and the file is still there which causes the message to appear for everyone. Delete this file and you should be back up an running.

 

Re-Save your Permalinks

Bizarre things can happen related to permalinks which cause strange issues around the site such as 404 errors showing and more. Even when they look correct when you view them in the settings page, just re-save them. Often this can fix random errors which you haven’t been able to identify yet.

 

Check your PHP Version

WordPress websites are hosted on a variety of PHP versions. What this means is that with newer and older versions of PHP, certain functions are not available that your Plugins or Themes may be trying to use. There is no easy way of debugging issues like this and as such, this is a last record for identifying issues, so rebuild you web server with different versions of PHP to see if this solves the issue. One recently I came across related to email not being sent via a plugin due to a specific version of PHP that was being used. The lower version of PHP did work but broke something else, the newest version didn’t work but the other thing was fixed, the middle version broke something, etc. In the end the solution was to upgrade to a newer version and fix on of the bugs that was being caused elsewhere. No simple solution to these types of problems.

 

Check WordPress User Permissions

Sometimes issues can relate to what permissions a specific WordPress user has. Set up the Members WordPress plugin to see if the issue relates to a specific user group as to why they can or cannot do something.

 

Monitor What WordPress Users are Doing

When multiple administrators have access to the website, all with varying levels of skill, it is impossible to know what people are changing and when. Install a plugin such as Stream which can log all of this information which can come in handy for debugging issues next time around.

 

Summary

Following the above process systematically can identify the root cause of the majority of WordPress problems. Often identifying is a completely different thing than fixing the problem. Often during this process you will realise that your website has been built fairly poorly and requires a significant overhaul. Should you require any support debugging your WordPress problems, get in touch and we’ll happily help.

PayPal Policy Update Email Notification Phishing Scam

by | Jul 25, 2016 | Client Friendly, Security | 0 comments

Beware of the latest phishing email scam that is going around imitating a PayPal policy update. While PayPal often do send out similar emails, their terms and conditions are written as such that any updates are accepted by default so you never have to accept any new terms and conditions they announce.

The email;

Phishing Email Appearing to be from PayPal

 

While this email looks genuine on quick glance, when you hover over the links, you notice that they do not go to www.paypal.com or www.paypal.co.uk, instead they go elsewhere to a phishing website. Thankfully if you did click the link in the email accidentally, if you are using a modern web browser, you are alerted to this attack;

Google Chrome Security Warning

 

Another key aspect to notice in the original email is the recipient details which clearly don’t look genuine. While many aspects of this data can be easily faked, when the scammer hasn’t bothered to fake this data, it is easy to spot these kind of attacks;

Email Recipients for PayPal Phishing Email

 

As always, never click on suspicious links in emails and instead visit the website directly where you will find a notification if this is a genuine email.

How to a Add Custom Field to WooCommerce Product Category Pages to Display Content Below Products

by | Jul 5, 2016 | Developer, WordPress | 32 comments

By default, WooCommerce displays Product Category content above the products which are listed. Which is fine in many cases, although when you want to add in more than a couple of hundred words here, the Product Category page on WooCommerce soon pushes all of the actual products below the fold which isn’t that useful for a user. As such, you may want to add more content beneath the product listings to allow you to add more content to the page for users.

Firstly, whenever you are editing WooCommerce template files, make sure you are doing this correctly via your Child Theme to override WooCommerce template files. The file you need to edit (at the time of writing, this may change…) is archive-product.php. Copy this file from your /Plugins/WooCommece/Templates/ folder into your /Theme-Child/woocommerce/ folder.

 

Add Custom Field

To start with, the first thing to do is to use the Advanced Custom Fields plugin to add a custom field which is triggered only when: Taxonomy Term, is equal to, Product Categories. See the ‘Location’ heading when adding the custom fields. Let’s assume you’ve added a WYSYWIG editor for the purposes of this guide. You can add any type of field you like here which is handy.

Once set this Custom Field up correctly, you will now see this field display in the Product Category admin screen where you can add additional content to this section. Once you have added content here, the next step is to display this content to the user on the front end of the website.

 

Display Custom Field Content – archive-product.php

Back to the archive-product.php file. Add the following piece of code beneath where you see the code;


<?php

/*** woocommerce_after_shop_loop hook.

** @hooked woocommerce_pagination - 10

*/

do_action( 'woocommerce_after_shop_loop' );

?>

Add this code to display the custom field;


<?php

$term_id = get_queried_object()->term_id;

$post_id = 'product_cat_'.$term_id;

$custom_field = get_field('woocommerce_product_category_page_bottom_description', $post_id); // My Advanced Custom Field Variable

?>

<br>

<div><?php echo $custom_field; ?> </div> <?php // Get Advanced Custom Field Value ?>

 

The ‘woocommerce_product_category_page_bottom_description’ text above is what your Custom Field is named as that you created previously. If you have used a different name, replace this here.

 

Display Custom Field Content – functions.php

Alternatively if you would prefer not to edit child-WooCommerce files, then you can add the following code to your function.php in your Child Theme which will add the following action onto the ‘woocommerce_after_shop_loop’ hook;


function action_woocommerce_after_shop_loop() {

$term_id = get_queried_object()->term_id;

$post_id = 'product_cat_'.$term_id;

$custom_field = get_field('woocommerce_product_category_page_bottom_description', $post_id); // My Advanced Custom Field Variable

echo $custom_field;

};

add_action( 'woocommerce_after_shop_loop', 'action_woocommerce_after_shop_loop', 10, 2 );

Display

View the Product Category page and you’ll soon have added this extra piece of information to your Product Category page which you can use as you like. This will display the content beneath the paginated links. Place the above content elsewhere to suit your needs if you want something different.

Why Divi is Our Preferred Choice of WordPress Theme

by | Jul 1, 2016 | Client Friendly, WordPress | 0 comments

Most WordPress websites that come our way do so in quite a bad state, for many different reasons. The process that we often then begin is one of getting everything working properly as it should. Part of this process is replacing the often extremely poorly built theme that is currently in place with one of the market leading options available. I can count on one hand the number of Theme companies I would trust to develop a high quality theme that is suitable for business use, and none of them are from Theme marketplaces. But let’s look at Divi first.

Divi is a Theme created by Elegant Themes and is currently the market leading WordPress Theme for a number of reasons;

 

WordPress Theme Usage Statistics July 2016

 

Remembering that the WordPress platform powers over 25% of websites on the entire internet, the fact that Divi powers 8% of WordPress websites just goes to show it’s popularity, it is the single leading Theme in use on WordPress to date. But why is it so popular? We’ll let’s take a look at why we recommend Divi to businesses for the majority of projects.

 

Ease of Use, Flexibility & Fully Responsive

Divi is simply awesome. The flexibility to control the destiny of your website once set up correctly is immense. Not only is it possible to customise the look and feel of your website with a myriad of options, this is all fully responsive so every aspect of your website works across devices seamlessly.

 

Divi Responsive Grid System

 

Quality Code Base & Regular Updates

This is one of the biggest reasons why Divi is a popular choice for us, it is built extremely well. What this means in practice is that it is extensible, secure and it maintained on a regular basis. When Themes have been built extremely poorly (sure they may look nice, but if they haven’t been built well..) then you have a serious problem as you run into problem after problem after problem. Using an industry leading theme such as Divi means that you essentially have a team of developers working behind the scenes for you continually improving your website which is awesome. New features and bug fixes are released on a very regular basis at least monthly and often more.

 

Putting Businesses in Control

Most importantly though Divi gives you control of your own website as a business. Most WordPress themes are so inflexible for a user or require a developer to make even the simplest of changes that this can be a costly exercise for businesses to keep paying for updates. Once set up correctly, you have full control over virtually every aspect of your website with ease which can be extended as needed over time with additional content, features & functionality without the endless costs involved paying someone to keep updating your website.

All of this allows you to run your business as you choose without relying on a web developer for everything and slowing you down. Quite frankly too, we don’t particularly want to be making small tweaks on your website that you should really be doing yourself. It is not a cost effective method for you and it isn’t exactly a challenging task for us to do, we prefer to be working on the more advanced aspects of building your business further by integrating more technology to boost your revenue. When you work with industry leading technology, things just start to work for you and give you the flexibility to take your business in any direction you choose.

Is Divi perfect? Not by a long shot, there are many niggles which are annoying as there are with all technologies in one way or another. Is Divi the right choice for all projects? Certainly not. Divi works extremely well in many situations, although has its limits based on what you may be trying to achieve.

5 Tips to Boost Productivity with Digital Technologies

by | Jun 27, 2016 | Client Friendly, Future | 0 comments

Productivity is a key challenge within the UK. Only last year UK productivity widened to the worst since records began. UK workers produce significantly less per hour than the G7 average. Based on the results of the recent EU referendum, the productivity gap should be more of a concern to businesses than ever before. To compete on a global scale, now more than ever, businesses need to assess their own levels of productivity and seek to improve every aspect of their business. Digital technologies, automation and smart systems can significantly help businesses of all spaces, sizes and industries to enormously improve productivity. Essentially, achieve significantly more with less.

Below are our top 5 tips to boost the productivity of your business with digital technologies.

 

Boost the Productivity of your Social Media

Most businesses employ a junior member of staff to manage their social media channels for their businesses, or even teams of people or even external social media agencies to manage their social media. In this day and age, this is an extremely costly and inefficient way of managing your social media channels.  Technology could automate many aspects of your social media activities while remaining relevant for your audience and continually increasing your engagement levels over time.

Firstly, start to automate a significant amount of your social media activities using a suite of technology solutions. We help organisations automate their social media activities so that it takes no longer than 60 seconds per day to manage. Stop wasting time manually posting content to social media and instead boost your productivity through automation technology.

 

Boost the Productivity of your Website

Most businesses are still using out of date technology for their website which is inefficient, inflexible and insecure. This ultimately results in your activities surrounding your website being more focused around firefighting opposed to building and growing the strength of your digital presence.

Firstly, start to get the right technology in place as a solid foundation for growth. These days, there are a small few recommended options for your website technologies to provide a solid foundation for growth. If your website is either a static system you build over 2 years ago and haven’t touched or it is more of a pain than a pleasure to work with, then you need to get the right technology foundations in place for your business to begin to boost productivity within your organisation.

 

Boost the Productivity of your Sales & Marketing

Are you still employing teams of sales people, travelling around the country to sell your products and services to potential customers? This is an extremely inefficient and expensive way to do things. In the internet age, potential customers get extremely turned off by pushy sales people. Instead, potential customers want to work with industry leading organisations who are using digital technologies throughout their organisation.

Firstly, start to change the way your sales and marketing processes work. Still printing glossy brochures which end up as a foot stool under someone’s desk? Then start to engage with your potential customers through your website with content they are interested in reading. It is this type of content that is highly valuable throughout the sales process and can add a unique twist when marketing your businesses to stand out from the crowd. Using digital platforms throughout your sales & marketing processes will significantly help to boost the productivity within your business.

 

Boost the Productivity of your Office Activities

What are you doing on a day to day basis that is taking you time to do? Manually inputting data from one system to another, or dare I say, from paper? Automate it. Struggling to find information between multiple systems? Bring them all together under a single unified system with technology. Still using paper based forms within your businesses? Digitise them.

Firstly, start to take some time and critically think about what you are doing throughout the day. If you are doing a task more than once, then ask an expert about how you could automate this task. You will save yourself enormous amounts of time on a daily basis, freeing you up to do even more productive activities.

 

Boost the Productivity of your Legacy Systems

Many businesses are still shackled to legacy systems throughout their organisation. Whether this is technology focused or systems/processes focused based on ‘how things are done around here’. The reality is that you need to bring all of your legacy systems up to date using the right underlying technologies. If you don’t you risk not simply getting left behind, but becoming obsolete as a business.

Technology startups around the world are popping up on a daily basis which are replacing entire industries. Xero has made traditional accountancy practices obsolete. TendoJobs.com is revolutionising the recruitment world by putting the power back in the hands of employers and job hunters. Along with the usual suspects including Uber, Airbnb, etc. The point being, that once your systems are up to date, it is now time to start truly innovating within your businesses to boost productivity enormously.

 

Summary

Boosting productivity within your organisation is an extremely efficient way to utilise the resources within your organisation in the best possible way. It is only through effective use of digital technologies that your businesses will be able to compete over the next few years, so the sooner you start the better. If you are unsure where to begin, get in touch and one of our digital experts will happily guide you through the process and show you how your organisation can begin to truly transform and embrace digital technologies.