Since 5.2, WordPress has come with in an in built health check. We take an in-depth look.
A little known feature that crept in to WordPress 5.2 is the health check. It’s quite simple with just two tabs, but can be very useful for debugging issues or looking at basic server information – all from inside WordPress.
You can access health check from the WordPress admin, by going to Tools >> Site Health.
You will notice two tabs on the health check screen as well as an overall rating e.g. “Good”.
1. Status
This tab can show up potential issues, such as those in the screenshot below.
It also shows the tests that your site has passed.
Importantly, if you see some errors, how do you solve them? This isn’t necessarily a one-size fits all answer. As you can see, the tests are quite varied. Some are about themes and plugins being up to date, but some are more obscure such as missing server modules.
The best thing you can do is expand any tests that have failed or recommendations. Recommendations are just that, recommendations – they are optional, but not doing fixing these may have consequences. Failures should be looked at more urgently.
It’s likely that some of the tests will be easily solvable by updating WordPress, plugins or themes. For others, you are going to likely need to contact your host. A managed WordPress host shouldn’t be failing any of these, but more generic hosting might.
2. Info
The “info” tab shows useful information about your WordPress environment and server. This includes, but isn’t limited to:
- Your PHP version
- Your web server software e.g Apache, Litespeed or NGiNX
- The maximum file upload size
- Your version of MySQL
A lot of this information is useful to know, or have access to without having to ask your hosting or WordPress provider. For example, some plugins have a minimum version of PHP they are designed for.
Plugin Developers – Add Your Own Checks
Plugin developers can add their own checks and we’d encourage developers to do this. Jetpack has done this excellently.
See the Health Check announcement for some example code.
Wrapping it up
The health check is certainly a nice feature of WordPress and we hope more plugin developers adopt this standard. It’s nice to find our basic server information without having to install any plugins or leave the WordPress admin. Did you notice this feature? let us know your thoughts in the comments.