Tag: tricks

Round Up: 18 Free Plugins to Help Troubleshoot and Debug WordPress

Jeff Starr

I’ve written numerous tutorials explaining how to troubleshoot WordPress, plugins, email, and more. When investigating issues, diagnosing problems, and hunting bugs, troubleshooting is a critical core skill for any web developer. To help readers level up their tool belt, here’s a quick round-up of free plugins to help troubleshoot any of your WordPress projects.

Plugins to troubleshoot & debug WordPress

There are TONS of great troubleshooting plugins available at the WordPress.org Plugin Directory. Some of these plugins you’re probably familiar with, others are newer with their own unique features. While nobody is gonna need all of these plugins, it is comforting that there are so many to choose from. So you can find the best tools for whatever inspecting or debugging is needed. Plus all of these plugins are open source and 100% free. So without further ado..

★ BugFu Console Debugger
Handy plugin that enables logging of PHP directly via the browser console. Can be a huge time saver for developers.
★ Code Profiler
Measures the performance of your plugins and themes at the PHP level. Finally a replacement for the once-great P3 Profiler.
★ Debug
Handles the configuration of debug and other variables via wp-config.php. So you don’t have to edit the file manually.
★ Debug Bar
Adds a debug menu to the admin bar that shows query, cache, and other debugging information. Super useful tool for analyzing performance.
★ Debug Info
Provides important details about your WordPress operating environment. Easy way to get PHP configuration (via phpinfo()).
★ Debug Log Manager
Provides all sorts of tools for managing your site’s debug logs and more. Another massive time-saving tool.
★ Debug This
Displays lots of details about your WordPress site via the admin bar. Reveals “under the hood” what’s happening on each page.
★ Log HTTP Requests
Incredibly useful plugin for measuring and logging outgoing HTTP requests. One of my favorite plugins when developing.. other plugins :)
★ Plugin Detective
Holds your hand through the process of troubleshooting your site. Could be super useful depending on your workflow.
★ Query Monitor
Enables debugging of database queries, PHP errors, hooks, and much more. Hands down one of the best plugins for debugging WordPress.
★ System Dashboard
Monitors WordPress components, processes, server hardware, software, and resource usage. A must-have for serious WordPress developers.
★ Variable Inspector
Enables you to inspect various PHP variables via the dashboard in the WP Admin Area. Huge time-saver when working with PHP variables.
★ WP Console
Adds PsySH runtime developer console, interactive debugger and REPL. Write code and view the output right in your browser.
★ WP Crontrol
Enables you to view and control what’s happening in the WP-Cron system. Excellent plugin and highly recommended.
★ WP Debug Log
Enables you to check the debug log from the dashboard and optionally send email notifications. Looks super useful for debugging with WordPress.
★ WP Debugging
Adds the requisite PHP constants to the wp-config.php file to enable debugging. So you don’t have to edit the file manually.
★ WPPerformanceTester
Measures performance of your WordPress site. Looks interesting and useful but hasn’t been updated in a while.
★ WordPress Hosting Benchmark tool
Tests the performance of your server and compares with results from other servers. A great tool for diving deeper into server performance.
★ Explore even more debug tools..
The WP Plugin Directory is loaded with many plugins for developing, troubleshooting, and debugging your site. Try a few searches and browse the results. All free and open source. Amazing.
Shouts out to the developers working to provide these free tools to the WordPress community. Your work is important and appreciated.

Note: WordPress plugins tend to change over time, usually for the better but not always. So to be safe, make sure to check the official homepage/docs for more details before trying any of the above plugins. If anything should or should not be on the list, please let us know so we can update the post. Thank you!

Props

Gotta give props here. I was inspired to put this round up together after seeing this post in David McCan’s Dynamic WordPress group on Facebook. Check it out for some interesting comments and more ideas for troubleshooting your WordPress-powered websites.

Cheers! ?


The Difference Between Taxonomies, Categories, and Tags (Oh My!)

Jeff Starr

A common question for new WordPress users is, “what’s the difference between categories and tags?” Like everyone knows what a “category” is, but the idea of “tags” can seem very similar. And then you throw in related WordPress concepts like “taxonomy”, and things can get confusing very quickly. But no worries, it’s really not that complicated. Let’s break it down..

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Taxonomies

In WordPress, Taxonomies are used to organize posts. There are different types of taxonomies. The two most familiar types of Taxonomies are Categories and Tags. Both are enabled by default when you install WordPress. So when you create a post, you can choose which categories and tags should be assigned.

Currently, WordPress provides three taxonomies by default:

  • Categories – hierarchical taxonomy
  • Tags – non-hierarchical taxonomy
  • Post Formats – non-hierarchical taxonomy

In addition to these default taxonomies, a WordPress site also may support some Custom Taxonomies that are provided by plugins. For example, an e-commerce plugin may add custom taxonomies for things like “Product Type”, “Price Range”, “Brand Name”, or any other attribute. And for each of these taxonomies, you can add any number of terms.

Note: You can learn more about Post Formats at WordPress.org.

Notice in the above list of default taxonomies, that Categories are hierarchical while Tags are not. This means that categories can have sub-categories (aka child categories), like this:

  • Hats
  • Shirts
  • Pants
  • Shoes
    • Fast shoes
    • Slow shoes
    • Nice shoes
      • Smooth shoes
      • Fancy shoes
      • Funny shoes

Categories can have as many sub-categories as needed. Tags on the other hand, are non-hierarchical, so there are no child tags or grandchild tags. It’s a “flat” taxonomy. Further, any custom taxonomies may be either hierarchical or non-hierarchical, depending on how they are configured.

Note: Some themes also provide their own custom taxonomies, although they shouldn’t. According to WordPress best practices, adding custom taxonomies is “plugin territory”. Only plugins should provide custom taxonomies.

Simple example

To illustrate, say we have a post that describes a store product, like shoes. It might have the following taxonomies (left column) and terms (right column):

Post = Shoes that don't leave any footprints

	Category:      Store
	Tags:          stealth, speed
	Product Type:  shoes
	Price Range:   $100-$300
	Brand Name:    Rolf Ahl

This shows how taxonomies are used to define relationships between posts. So on the front end, visitors can sort items based on their category, tags, product type, and so forth. Indeed, any aspect of your posts can be classified and organized with taxonomies.

Real-world example

To check out an effective use of taxonomies, visit Amazon.com and do a search for something like “shoes”. Then look in the sidebar at all the different ways to sort the results. Each of those sidebar sections (like “Shoe Size” and “Shoe Width”) are added via custom taxonomies. Amazon doesn’t actually run on WordPress, but it’s a great example of taxonomies.

Search results for 'shoe' at Amazon.comAll the sidebar options are examples of custom taxonomies.

As shown here, taxonomies enable your visitors to easily sort through your posts and find related and similar content.

Categories vs. Tags

As discussed, both Categories and Tags are types of Taxonomies. The only technical difference is that Categories are hierarchical, while Tags are not. So with categories, you can create sub-categories (or child categories). With tags, you cannot. Tags always have a “flat” organizational structure.

Other than that, the main difference between Categories and Tags has to do with scope. With WordPress:

  • Categories are used to broadly organize posts into groups
  • Tags are used to denote any specific post characteristics

I know that’s a bit abstract, so let’s go through some “real-world” examples..

Categories: real-world example

Let’s say it’s our job to clean up a house that has tons of junk in it. There are piles of stuff all over the place, and it’s our job to go in there and clean it all up. First we create two piles: “stuff that stays”, and “stuff that goes”. Those two piles represent categories.

After hauling away the “stuff that goes” pile, it’s time to organize the “stuff that stays”. Again, we use categories to make things easier. There are many ways we could categorize all the remaining items. We could organize by room, so our categories would be like:

  • Living Room
  • Kitchen
  • Bathroom
  • Bedroom

Makes sense, right? It’s the same idea with WordPress posts. Categories simply group similar types of posts together. For the purpose of organizing content and making it easier for visitors to find.

Categories: another example

Generally categories represent broad similarities among items, but you can get as specific as you’d like. For example, it’s common for a web-development site to group posts into the following categories:

  • CSS
  • HTML
  • PHP
  • JavaScript
  • Etc.

..such that each coding language gets its own category. That’s gonna keep posts broadly organized based just on the language. All posts about CSS go into the “CSS” category. All posts about HTML into the “HTML” category, and so forth.

But you can get more specific with categories. Say our tutorial site has a LOT of posts on all the coding languages. We might want to refine our categories to include version information, for example:

  • CSS
    • CSS 1.0
    • CSS 2.0
    • CSS 3.0
  • HTML
    • HTML 4.0
    • HTML 5.0
  • Etc.

Because categories can be hierarchical, we can get as specific or as broad as is necessary to organize your posts. And to organize things even further, we can throw tags into the mix..

Tags: real-world example

Returning to our “hoarder house” example, let’s look at how we can use tags to help further organize things. Recall that all the stuff currently is organized by room. So our categories are:

  • Living Room
  • Kitchen
  • Bathroom
  • Bedroom

In each room, we can further organize things by adding a tag to each item. For example, we tag the “chairs”, “tables”, “desks”, “electronics”, “clothes”, “food”, “towels”, and so on. And the nice thing about tags is that they can be added across categories. There may be “chairs” in both Living Room and Kitchen categories. Or there may be “electronics” in all categories. So when visitors arrive at your house, they can click the “food” tag and eat all of your food, regardless of which room it’s in :)

10-second summary

The difference between Taxonomies, Categories, and Tags:

  • Taxonomies are used to organize posts. WordPress provides two default Taxonomies: Categories and Tags. It’s also possible to create Custom Taxonomies. Taxonomies may be hierarchical or non-hierarchical.
  • Categories are used to broadly organize posts into groups. Categories may have a hierarchical structure.
  • Tags denote any specific post characteristics. Tags are non-hierarchical, flat organizational structure.

Resources


Stay Logged in to WordPress

Jeff Starr

I work from home so can afford to leave tabs open for each of my WordPress sites. That way I can jump on anytime and update or add new content very quickly. The problem I kept running into is that WordPress automatically logs out users after 48 hours. Which means I have to log back in every day even when it’s not necessary. So I needed a way to stay logged in to WordPress indefinitely. Fortunately WordPress is very flexible and easy to customize, and the login duration can be changed via several different methods.

Here are three easy ways to stay logged in to WordPress for a longer period of time.

Three ways to do it..

Check the box

The easiest way to increase the expiration date/time for logins, is to simply check the “Remember Me” checkbox when logging in to WordPress. That will increase the expiration to 14 days, or whenever the browser is closed. After that time, the session cookie expires and you’ll need to log in once again.

This is useful if 14 days is enough time for your workflow.

One downside is that it requires an extra click to check the box. Fine I guess if you’re logging in manually. But if you’re using a password manager or other auto-login app, the extra checkbox step requires action on your part, thus adding friction and slowing things down.

Another downside is that 14 days is not always enough. For my own workflow, I prefer to minimize as many needless steps as possible. So I prefer the next method of extending the login duration, using a slice of custom code..

Add custom code

For more flexibility and less friction, you can add the following code snippet to stay logged in to WordPress for however long is necessary, even indefinitely if it makes sense to do so. This is the preferred technique for my own websites.

Important: Be mindful of any other users who may be logging in on public machines. Only extend the login duration if you know 100% that it’s safe and secure.

Here is the magic code to stay logged in to the WordPress Admin Area. You can add this code via your theme functions file, or add via simple custom plugin. Here is a guide that explains how to do both.

function shapeSpace_stay_logged_in($expires) {
	
	return 172800; // default 48 hours
	
}
add_filter('auth_cookie_expiration', 'shapeSpace_stay_logged_in');

As written, this code hooks into auth_cookie_expiration and filters the expiration duration (in seconds). By default the duration is 48 hours. You can change that to anything that works best.

To stay logged in forever, change the interval to some very large number, like 3153600000 to stay logged in for 100 years ;) To help with converting time to seconds, you can use a free time conversion calculator.

Thanks to Alex Mills (Viper007Bond) for sharing this code at Stack Exchange.

Install a plugin

If you want to extend the login beyond 14 days, but don’t want to go the custom code route, installing a plugin is the way to go. Currently there seems to be only a couple of capable plugins in the WP Plugin Directory:

Let me know if I’ve missed anything! :)


How to Disable Embeds for Any Specific URLs

Jeff Starr

Quick tip: how to disable embeds for any URL(s). The other day I was adding URLs to a draft post in WordPress. Some of the URLs were for Twitter tweets. Checking a preview of the post on the front end, I was surprised that WordPress had automatically embedded the actual tweet in place of the URL. After a few minutes searching for a way to disable the automatic embedded tweet, I remembered about WordPress oEmbed (now referred to as Embeds), which I’ve actually written about in several tutorials. Turns out the solution is dead simple.

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How embed works

By default, WordPress embeds tweets, video, audio, and other media from third-party services like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and many other sites.

Embed media via block editor

To enable embed for any URL when using the Gutenberg Block Editor, add an Embed Block and enter the URL. WordPress takes care of the rest, and will automatically convert the URL to embedded media, right there on your page.

Embed media via classic editor

To enable embed for any URL when using the Classic Editor, simply add the URL on its own line, like this:

Lorem ipsum this is just an example..

https://twiter.com/perishable/status/1616553818183065601

Lorem ipsum dolor amet..

When WordPress finds any URLs on their own line, it auto-embeds the actual media. For example here is the previous tweet URL added to its own line:

If all is working correctly, a formatted tweet should be displayed. This method works for all supported media sites.

How to disable embed for any URL

As you’ve probably guessed, the solution to not auto-embedding media is simple. Here’s how to do it easily using either the Gutenberg Block Editor or the Classic Editor.

Disable embeds via block editor

To disable media embeds for any specific URL using the block editor, simply remove whichever Embeds block contains your URL. I know, it may seem obvious but not everyone knows or understands how it all works.

Disable embeds via classic editor

To disable media embeds for any specific URL using the classic editor, make sure that the URL is not written on its own line. There are numerous ways of doing it, the easiest is to simply prepend a word like “Link”, for example:

Link: https://twitter.com/perishable/status/1616553818183065601

Another method is to make the URL an actual link, by wrapping it with an HTML hyperlink, for example in the post we would write:

<a href="https://twitter.com/perishable/status/1616553818183065601">https://twitter.com/perishable/status/1616553818183065601</a>

On the page, wrapping a URL with a link looks like this:

https://twitter.com/perishable/status/1616553818183065601

See ma! No embed! :)

How to disable ALL media embeds

An easy way to disable WordPress oEmbed/Embeds is to use a plugin.

Currently there is only one available at the WordPress Plugin Directory, Disable Embeds by Pascal Birchler.

I’ve used this plugin on my sites for several years now. It does a great job of disabling all of the needless oEmbed scripts and functionality. BUT it only disables oEmbed for non-whitelisted sites. So media embeds for sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al will continue to work normally.

SO at this point, in order to disable ALL media embeds, you’ve gotta do it with custom code. I’m not going to rewrite the wheel here, tutorials for this already exist, for example:

From what I can tell, either tutorial provides the same code/information, and should work great to completely disable ALL WordPress Embeds on your site.

CU Later

I didn’t see this information posted anywhere so thought I’d share here at DigWP.com. Cheers people :)


Database Tip: Clean Up User-Agent Data

Jeff Starr

I just finished up my latest book, Wizard’s SQL Recipes for WordPress. And it’s packed with over 300 time-saving code snippets for managing and optimizing your WordPress database. For example, one of the recipes from the book shows how to delete unwanted user-agent data from the WP comments table. This is an easy optimization step that can help to free up some precious disk space.

Check out the Demo/Table of Contents for Wizard’s SQL Recipes for WordPress.

Show all user-agent data

Did you know that WordPress collects the visitor’s user-agent data for every comment? In the database, user-agent data is stored in the comments table in the comment_agent column. But you would never know it because WordPress does not display the collected user-agent data anywhere in the Admin Area. No worries for us though. A simple SQL query will summon the information:

SELECT comment_ID, comment_author, comment_agent 
FROM wp_comments;

If comments have ever been enabled on your site, that simple query may return some surprising results. Or if you’re using an application like phpMyAdmin to manage your database, you can check out all of the user-agent data by visiting the wp_comments table and examining the comment_agent column. To give you a better idea, here is an example of a typical user agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36
(KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/94.0.4606.81 Safari/537.36

Most comments should have some sort of user agent recorded, although some may not. It depends entirely on the client that the visitor was using when leaving the comment. Incidentally, any collected user-agent data can be used to identify which browsers/clients people (and bots) are using to visit your site.

Tip: WhatIsMyBrowser.com provides an excellent tool for identifying user agents.

In general, user agents can vary greatly. Some user agents consist of a small number of characters, while many others (like the previous example) consist of many characters. Either way, depending on the number of comments, user-agent data can consume a significant amount of space.

Delete all user-agent data

Before going further, if your site uses a plugin that makes use of user agents (remember, WordPress itself does not use user agents for anything), then stop right here. You don’t want to delete any user-agent data. But for everyone else — like probably around 99% of WordPress sites — all of that user-agent information is pretty much useless. So it gives us an excellent opportunity to clean up the database by deleting all user-agent information from the comments table. Here is the magic SQL recipe to do it:

UPDATE wp_comments SET comment_agent = '';

Here we replace the user-agent data with a blank/empty value for all comments in the WordPress database. If you would rather replace the data with n/a or any other string, replace '' with 'n/a' or whatever makes sense for your site.

Depending on the number of comments on your site, that simple query can reduce the size of the database considerably. And that’s a good thing.

Want more SQL recipes like this one? Check out Wizard’s SQL Recipes for WordPress — includes an entire chapter on optimizing the WP database!


How to Disable Gutenberg Styles on the Frontend

Jeff Starr

By default the Gutenberg Block Editor loads its default CSS/stylesheet on the front-end of your WordPress site. This is fine for most cases, but there may be situations where you want to disable the Gutenberg styles for whatever reason. For example, my free WordPress plugin, Disable Gutenberg, enables users to disable the Gutenberg Block Editor and restore the Classic Editor. Included in the plugin settings is an option called “Enable Frontend” that lets users enable or disable the Gutenberg CSS/styles as desired. This quick DigWP tutorial explains programmatically how to disable Gutenberg styles on the front-end.

Bonus: Disable Gutenberg plugin also enables restoring of Classic Widgets!

Why?

One reason why people may want to remove extraneous/unnecessary CSS/stylesheets from loading is improved site performance. So by disabling the Gutenberg CSS when it’s not needed, that’s one less asset that needs to load for every page request. That can have a huge cumulative effect on the performance of your WordPress site.

FYI the default Gutenberg stylesheet looks like this when included in the source code of your web pages:

<link rel='stylesheet' id='wp-block-library-css'  href='https://example.com/wp-includes/css/dist/block-library/style.min.css' type='text/css' media='all' />

So you know what to look for.

Disable Gutenberg styles on the front-end

Without further ado, here is the magic code snippet sauce to add to your WordPress-powered site. You can add this code using a plugin such as Code Snippets, or you can add directly via theme (or child theme) functions.php, or add via simple custom plugin. Many ways to add the following code:

// disable gutenberg frontend styles @ https://m0n.co/15
function disable_gutenberg_wp_enqueue_scripts() {
	
	wp_dequeue_style('wp-block-library');
	wp_dequeue_style('wp-block-library-theme');
	
}
add_filter('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'disable_gutenberg_wp_enqueue_scripts', 100);

This script disables the default Gutenberg stylesheet wp-block-library, and it also disables the theme-specific Gutenberg stylesheet (if applicable) wp-block-library-theme. That’s all it does, plain and simple.

Note: To re-enable the Gutenberg styles, simply remove the above code snippet.

Bonus: Disable other block stylesheets

In general, any WordPress stylesheet can be disabled using the WP core function, wp_dequeue_style(). For example, if you are using WooCommerce and the Storefront theme, you may want to prevent their related Gutenberg Block CSS/stylesheets from loading on the front-end. To do it, modify the previous code snippet so it looks like this:

// disable gutenberg frontend styles @ https://m0n.co/15
function disable_gutenberg_wp_enqueue_scripts() {
	
	wp_dequeue_style('wp-block-library');
	wp_dequeue_style('wp-block-library-theme');
	
	wp_dequeue_style('wc-block-style'); // disable woocommerce frontend block styles
	wp_dequeue_style('storefront-gutenberg-blocks'); // disable storefront frontend block styles
	
}
add_filter('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'disable_gutenberg_wp_enqueue_scripts', 100);

The wp_dequeue_style() function is what’s doing all the work here. It is very effective and can be used to disable any stylesheet that is registered with WordPress. Check the docs at WordPress.org for more details.

One for the road..

The code techniques so far are kept very minimal for the sake of clarity. But as you probably know, there is much more that can be done when customizing asset loading and so forth. For example, you can add conditional logic so the stylesheets will be disabled only under certain conditions.

To give you an idea of the possibilities, here is a “real-world” example showing how Disable Gutenberg conditionally disables the front-end styles depending on user preference in the plugin settings.

// disable gutenberg frontend styles @ https://m0n.co/15
function disable_gutenberg_wp_enqueue_scripts() {
	
	global $wp_query;
	
	if (is_admin()) return;
	
	$post_id = isset($wp_query->post->ID) ? $wp_query->post->ID : null;
	
	$options = get_option('disable_gutenberg_options');
	
	$enable = isset($options['styles-enable']) ? $options['styles-enable'] : false;
	
	if (!$enable && !disable_gutenberg_whitelist($post_id)) {
		
		wp_dequeue_style('wp-block-library');
		wp_dequeue_style('wp-block-library-theme');
		
	}
	
}
add_filter('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'disable_gutenberg_wp_enqueue_scripts', 100);

Again this is just an example taken from an actively developed plugin. So much more is possible, as WordPress core provides all sorts of useful functions with which to work. So have fun and build something creative :)

Note: The above code snippet taken from the Disable Gutenberg plugin is for example purposes only; so don’t try to use it on any live site. Instead if you want to explore, download the plugin and examine the source code.

Related Posts

More of our posts on Gutenberg Block Editor:


Fix Site Health Error: The authorization header is missing

Jeff Starr

Quick post that explains how to fix the error, “The authorization header is missing”. This error may be found under “recommended improvements” in the WordPress Site Health tool (located under the WP menu ▸ Tools ▸ Site Health).

When running a Site Health check, the “authorization header” warning happens when you’ve upgraded WordPress (to version 5.6 or better) and have Permalinks enabled, but the site’s .htaccess rules have not been updated with the latest. This DigWP tutorial explains what’s happening and shows how to fix the error easily with a few clicks.

The authorization header is missing.

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The solution

When testing your WordPress with the Site Health tool, if you get this:

Site Health Results: Authorization Header MissingWP menu ▸ Tools ▸ Site Health — The authorization header is missing. Click for full-size image.

If you click the error and toggle it open, you’ll get a bit more information: “The Authorization header comes from the third-party applications you approve. Without it, those apps cannot connect to your site.” Screenshot:

Site Health Results: Authorization Header Missing (Details)Details about the authorization-header error. Click for full-size image.

This error means that your WordPress Permalink rules are not up-to-date. To fix the issue, you need to update the Permalink rules in your site’s .htaccess file. There are several ways to do this:

  • Easy — Visit your Permalink settings and click “Save Changes”
  • Manual — Manually update .htaccess with current Permalink rules

So try the easy method first. If it works, then stop; you’re done. If it does not work, the “manual” method definitely should resolve the issue. Let’s walk through each of these solutions..

Flush Permalinks

The easiest way to fix the authorization-header issue, is to click on the “Flush permalinks” link, which is displayed right there on the Site Health screen. Here is a screenshot:

Authorization Header Missing: Flush PermalinksShowing the location of the “Flush permalinks” link. Click for full-size image.

That will take you to the WordPress Permalinks settings. This is where you can “flush” (i.e., update) your site’s Permalink rules. You can do this by clicking the “Save Changes” button as shown here:

Permalink settings showing Save Changes buttonPermalink settings showing the “Save Changes” button. Click for full-size image.

You do NOT need to make any actual changes to any Permalink settings. All you need to do is click “Save Changes” and done. Once you do that, WordPress will attempt to update the site’s .htaccess file with the latest/current Permalink rules. Thus solving the authorization-header issue. You can verify the fix by running a fresh Site Health test.

Important! Updating/flushing Permalink rules via the Admin Area results in changes made to the .htaccess file on the server. Flushing does not affect the local copy of your .htaccess file. So make sure to update both local and server copies to avoid having to go through this again in the future.

Manually update .htaccess

If the easy method does not work to resolve the “authorization header is missing”, you will need to update your Permalink rules manually. To do it, open your site’s .htaccess file. Look for a block of code that begins with this line:

# BEGIN WordPress

..and ends with this line:

# END WordPress

Located between these two lines are the WordPress Permalink rules. Whatever you have there, you want to replace with the latest set of rules. You can find the current rules at WordPress.org. So grab a copy of the correct rules for your site (Basic or Multisite), and replace your existing rules via copy/paste. Save the file, upload, and done.

That should resolve the Site Health authorization-header issue. To verify success, try another test with the Site Health tool.

If after updating your Permalink rules, Site Health continues to show the error, most likely there is something else that is interfering with normal functionality. In this case you may contact your support team. Or if you’re savvy, follow our Troubleshooting Guide to help diagnose and resolve any outstanding issues.

About the error

So what causes the “authorization header” error? WordPress version 5.6 introduces Application Passwords. This feature enables authenticated users and apps to interact with your site. Application Passwords started as an awesome free plugin that could be added to any WordPress site as needed. Now it’s been integrated into WordPress core so all sites must have it, whether needed or not.

DigWP Tip: If you have no need for Application Passwords, you can disable them easily with my free plugin, Disable Application Passwords.

WordPress users may be familiar with the new “Application Passwords” settings that are displayed on the Profile screen of every registered user. If you have yet to check it out, go take a look at the bottom of any “Edit User” screen. Here is a screenshot of how it looks in WordPress 5.6:

Application Passwords SettingsWP menu ▸ User Profile/Edit User ▸ Application Passwords settings. Click for full-size image.

That’s all great, but what most WordPress users probably are not aware of, is that the new Application Passwords feature brings changes to the WordPress Permalink rules located in the site’s .htaccess file. The changes are required for WordPress and Application Passwords to work properly.

.htaccess changes in WP 5.6

Here is the new line that is added to WordPress Permalink rules (via .htaccess) in version 5.6:

RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

This line helps to handle the Authorization header for HTTP requests coming from any approved third-party applications. Without proper handling of the Authorization header, apps will not be able to connect with your site.

So for sites using outdated Permalink rules, the above new line will be missing from .htaccess. This causes errors when WordPress tries processing requests. The Site Health error happens because WordPress expects certain authorization headers that are not included with the request.

As of now, here is what the WordPress Permalink rules look like in the site’s .htaccess file:

# BEGIN WordPress
# The directives (lines) between "BEGIN WordPress" and "END WordPress" are
# dynamically generated, and should only be modified via WordPress filters.
# Any changes to the directives between these markers will be overwritten.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Notice the E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION rule added right up front there. When that line is included as shown here, the Site Health “authorization header” error should not happen.

DigWP Tip: For a complete guide to Apache/.htaccess, check out my book .htaccess made easy. Features an entire chapter covering all things WordPress :)

How to Troubleshoot WordPress, Easy Step-by-Step Guide

Jeff Starr

Easily hands down the most common thing that I find myself explaining to WordPress users is how to troubleshoot WordPress in order to find the cause of some issue. And it makes sense if you think about it. WordPress and all of its plugins and themes are made of code. And code is a complex thing. The more code you add to a site, the more likely it is for bugs and issues to happen. And when they do, it can be confusing and frustrating to the average user.

Fortunately, there is a reliable, proven technique for figuring out why any given problem is happening. It's referred to as "troubleshooting", a very powerful tool that everyone should have in their belt. This DigWP tutorial explains two methods of troubleshooting using plain, easy to follow steps.

Troubleshooting is something that literally anyone can do. It is a straightforward, proven process that helps millions of people diagnose problems every day.

Table of Contents

Two different approaches

When it comes to troubleshooting WordPress, there are two ways to do it:

  • From the top down
  • From the ground up

Each of these methods uses basic logic to eliminate variables and determine causality. As one might imagine, either technique has its own pros and cons. In a nutshell, most common method is top-down, which is used to quickly diagnose plugin/theme conflicts, etc. The ground-up method is a more rigorous, clinical approach that generally requires more time.

Let's take a closer look at each..

Troubleshooting from the top down

Top-down testing is basically:

Temporarily deactivating each of your other plugins one at a time, re-testing the problem/issue after each, until the issue no longer happens. This tells you as quickly as possible which plugin is interfering with normal functionality.

Pros of top-down testing:

  • Can be the fastest way of diagnosing issues

Cons of top-down testing:

  • May not be feasible to test on a live site
  • Can be complicated if lots of other plugins used on site
  • May require lots of time if using lots of other plugins

To understand how it works, let's go thru an example..

Example

Let's say that you have a plugin named "Amazing Plugin". It is not working correctly, and you suspect there is some conflict with one of your other plugins or theme. You want to find out why the issue is happening, and hopefully get it resolved. Before contacting the plugin provider, take a few minutes to do some basic testing of your plugins and theme. Doing so will help the support team understand and provide help as quickly as possible.

Here are the magic steps to troubleshoot your setup using top-down troubleshooting..

Troubleshooting steps

To troubleshoot why "Amazing Plugin" is not working using top-down testing, it is necessary to test all other plugins and the theme. It doesn't matter which you start with, for this tutorial we'll start with testing the other plugins, as that is where I've found most conflicts can happen.

Note: The steps below are for testing a plugin called "Amazing Plugin". The steps also work if you are testing a theme. Just replace "Amazing Plugin" with "Amazing Theme" and you're good to go.

Test your other plugins

  1. Deactivate one of your other plugins
  2. Re-test if Amazing Plugin is working properly
  3. If Amazing Plugin now works, stop; you have found the conflict
  4. Otherwise, if Amazing Plugin still is not working, deactivate another one of your other plugins
  5. If Amazing Plugin now works, stop; you have found the conflict
  6. Otherwise, if Amazing Plugin still is not working, deactivate another one of your other plugins
  7. Repeat this process for all of your other plugins, or until Amazing Plugin is working properly

At this point, if the Amazing Plugin is working normally, then the cause of the issue is whichever plugin that was last deactivated. Otherwise, if you get through deactivating all of your other plugins and Amazing Plugin still is not working correctly, it is time to repeat the test with your theme.

Test your theme

If you follow the above steps and deactivate all of your other plugins, and the problem remains, it's time to repeat the process to test your current theme:

  1. With all of the other plugins deactivated, switch to one of the default WP themes (e.g., Twenty Twenty)
  2. With the default theme active, try retesting the Amazing Plugin
  3. If Amazing Plugin now works properly, you have found the issue: there is some conflict with your theme
  4. Otherwise, if you have deactivated all other plugins and switched to the default theme, and the issue persists, then there is something else that is interfering

Hopefully at this point, you have found out which plugin or theme is interfering. If not, then further sleuthing is required to solve the mystery.

Beyond plugins and theme

After completing the above troubleshooting steps, in 99% of the cases I've seen, the conflicting plugin (or theme) will be found. If that is not the case, then one of the following must be true:

  • Further testing/troubleshooting is required
  • The issue is with the plugin itself
  • The issue is with WordPress core
  • Something else outside of WordPress
  • Some combination of the above

So with all other plugins deactivated, and using the default WordPress theme, if the issue persists, then there may be a conflict with specific plugin settings, server configuration, network interference, or even WordPress itself (although rare, in my experience). In this case, further testing is required in order to find (and hopefully resolve) the issue.

This is where ground-up testing can be useful. Instead of trying to reverse-engineer your entire current site, you can start from scratch using the ground-up technique, which gives you a "clean slate" that eliminates all other variables. Let's take a look..

Troubleshooting from the ground up

Ground-up testing is basically:

Set up a new WordPress installation, leave everything at the defaults (e.g., plugins, theme, and settings), and then install the plugin or theme that you want to troubleshoot. This enables you to verify that the plugin works normally, without interference from any other plugins, theme, or settings.

Pros of ground-up testing:

  • Gives you a clean slate to work with
  • Does not interfere with your other/original site
  • Provides a baseline where the plugin works correctly

Cons of ground-up testing:

  • Takes more time to set up another WP install
  • May require transferring of plugin license(s)

Let's look at a quick example..

Example

For example, say you have a plugin named "Super Duper". It is not working correctly, and you suspect there is some conflict with one of your other plugins or theme. You want to find out why the issue is happening, and hopefully get it resolved. Before contacting the plugin provider, take some time to do some basic troubleshooting. Doing so will help the support team understand and provide help as quickly as possible.

Troubleshooting steps

To troubleshoot why the Super Duper plugin is not working using ground-up troubleshooting, follow these steps:

  1. Set up a new WordPress installation
  2. Leave the plugins, theme, and settings at default values
  3. Install only the plugin (or theme) that is not working

After following these steps, you can verify that the plugin or theme you are testing works normally on default WordPress. This is your baseline: the plugin works on default WordPress. IF that is not the case, then you have found a bug with the plugin (or theme) itself. And should be reported to the plugin developer.

Otherwise, if the plugin is working properly on default WordPress, then the problem is not a bug with the plugin, but rather a bug with your particular setup, configuration, etc. So further testing is required..

Test your other plugins

Once you verify that the plugin is working properly on default WordPress, you can begin troubleshooting by installing and activating each of your other plugins, one at a time. You want to re-test the problematic plugin after adding each new plugin. At some point, as you are doing this, the issue will return, and you will know exactly which plugin is breaking things.

If you get through adding all of your other plugins, and the issue has not reappeared, the next step is to test your theme.

Test your theme

If you get through adding all of your other plugins without the issue reappearing, then move on to the theme. Try installing and activating whichever theme you are using on the other site and re-test the issue again. If the theme breaks things, then you have the information you need to either:

  • Report the issue to both plugin and theme developers
  • Troubleshoot within the theme itself (or hire someone to do it for you)

And of course, if you get to this point and the issue has not resurfaced, then yep you guessed it, more digging is required.

Beyond plugins and theme

If you get through testing each of your plugins and theme, and the issue does not return, then there must be something else — some other difference between your original WordPress installation and the test/default installation — that is causing the problem.

In this case, the next step is to figure out the specific differences between the two WordPress sites. For the sites to behave differently (i.e., one showing the issue and the other working normally), there must be some difference between them. Your job is to continue the troubleshooting process by eliminating variables until the issue returns.

Take-home message

The take-home message for this tutorial is that troubleshooting is something that literally anyone can do. It is a straightforward, proven process that helps millions of people diagnose problems every day. And more importantly, a bit of troubleshooting provides valuable information that can help the plugin or theme provider to understand and hopefully resolve any issue.

Remember, the people who develop your WordPress plugins and themes love to help you, but they are only human. They do not possess a crystal ball or Palantír that magically reveals to them exactly what is happening on any given site.

Seriously none of us have anything like that.

We have no idea what's happening on your site unless you tell us. So by doing some basic troubleshooting, you can provide the developer precise information, increase the chance of getting the issue resolved quickly, and benefit from better understanding of your own website.

Going further..

For a more in-depth troubleshooting tutorial, check out my post at Perishable Press: The Art of Troubleshooting WordPress. That goes into much more depth, plus provides all sorts of tips and tricks, etc.

Thanks for reading and happy troubleshooting.