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How to troubleshoot a WordPress site using Plugin Detective

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When a feature stops working on your WordPress website, minor panic can set in. If yours is one of the approximately 40% (as of this article’s publish date) of websites that’s running WordPress 5.2 or above, you’ve probably received an email entitled, “Your Site is Experiencing a Technical Issue”, and you’re off to quickly fix the problem. But, what if you’re managing a website below version 5.2 or didn’t receive the snazzy new error email? A difficult-to-troubleshoot error can ruin an entire afternoon of productivity (and sales) attempting to find the issue and fix the site. 

Here’s how to troubleshoot a WordPress website prior to WordPress 5.2 (spoiler: not too efficient)

  1. Disable all of the plugins on your website.
  2. Open a second tab with the front-end of your website and ready the reload button.
  3. Reenable plugins one by one as you refresh the front-end of your website.
  4. Find the plugin responsible for the issues, and fix accordingly.

For a long time, this has been the common advice on how to troubleshoot a WordPress site prior to WP 5.2. While not technically wrong, this process can be time consuming and arduous at a moment when speed and accuracy matter. In 2018 at WordCamp Orange County, WordPress pros Natalie MacLees and Nathan Tyler presented a new spin on an old method of troubleshooting WordPress websites.

How to troubleshoot a WordPress site the efficient way

Natalie and Nathan dug deep into their classic programming knowledge and created a plugin that automates the plugin enable/disable process using a binary search. The plugin is called Plugin Detective and it finds broken plugins in a fraction of the time that it’d take the traditional method. Here’s how it works:

  1. Plugin detective disables half of the plugins.
  2. If the problem persists, the plugin re-enables the first half, and disables the second half.
  3. If the problem is fixed, the plugin begins the same process on the new half, and continues until the offending plugin is determined.

Because the plugin uses a binary search, with every iteration, half of the plugins are ruled out. On a site with dozens of active plugins, this method saves a lot of time.

Putting Plugin Detective to the test

In theory Plugin Detective is a great idea, but I wanted to test out how it works on a real site. I installed a test site with sixteen active plugins, and intentionally put a typo in one of the plugin files to render the site inoperable.

The Plugin Detective (named Otto) started by asking if there were any required plugins that needed to be left on for the site to load. After all, there’s no sense disabling a key plugin and causing a different issue. I told Otto I didn’t have any required plugins on my site, and he started by disabling everything and asking me if the issue was fixed. (If the error was still happening, that meant that the cause of the error was probably something else, like mu-plugins or the theme.) Since my issue was fixed, Otto knew that one of the plugins was to blame.

The plugin ran through the list, activating or deactivating half of the list each time and asking me after each pass if the issue was resolved. Overall, it took seven passes for the Plugin Detective to determine which plugin was broken, and took less than a minute of elapsed time. Otto was also able to deactivate the offending plugin for me, so I didn’t have to mess around with (S)FTP or the database to manually disable it.

How to troubleshoot without access to wp-admin

The plugin worked really well, but I started to think, “what are the chances that the site I’m trying to troubleshoot has this plugin installed?” or, “what happens if I can’t get into the backend at all because of a white screen?”. Well, Natalie and Nathan must have had those same thoughts when they created Plugin Detective. If the plugin isn’t already installed on the broken site, it’s straightforward to get Plugin Detective up and running:

  1. Manually copy the unzipped plugin folder over to /wp-content/plugins
  2. Go to YOURSITE.COM/wp-content/plugins/plugin-detective/troubleshoot (which will load even if the site won’t load)
  3. Log in with a valid WordPress administrator account
  4. Say hi to Detective Otto!

Final thoughts on Plugin Detective

The ability to quickly and easily track down a plugin conflict on a white-screening site is impressive, and overall the Plugin Detective is an amazing plugin. Natalie and Nathan have really re-written the guide on how to troubleshoot a WordPress site using Plugin Detective, and we’ve quickly added the plugin to our troubleshooting toolkit for sites on older WordPress versions.

CoBlocks, the Gutenberg page builder

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We continue our Gutenberg block plugin review series with a dive into the features and benefits of CoBlocks. While most block plugins are billing themselves as first and foremost, block plugins, with a touch of page building capabilities, CoBlocks has gone all in as a self-proclaimed Gutenberg page builder. We spent some time playing with some of the latest CoBlocks features, and we’ll explore some of what we found in this article.

CoBlocks has powerful page building capabilities

The row is the one basic layout mechanism included with the CoBlocks system, and it’s powerful. Unlike some of the popular purpose-built page builders, the row block allows multiple levels of nesting; it’s also easy to adjust width, margin, padding, and colors of the [nested] rows. The block interface is super intuitive, and width adjustments can be made using drag-and-drop features that make this block feel very much like a visual builder. 

While CoBlocks is off to an excellent start as an in-editor page builder, there’s more work to be done to reach the level of capability of purpose-built builders which allow for conditional display and full-page layouts. Probably more a limitation of Gutenberg, the blocks interface gets a bit clunky attempting to drag elements from within the row block to other rows or new elements.

There are plenty of cool specialty blocks

From social blocks to restaurant / services menus, CoBlocks has created some pretty awesome blocks built with the same intuitive interface used within the row block. Our favorite specialty block is the Pricing Table which facilitates quick creation of simple, responsive pricing tables well suited for a services company. These specialty blocks compliment mobile responsive Genesis themes and help the creation of advanced layout objects that appear to have been built mobile-first. The masonry gallery is also particularly awesome providing a nice visual refresh of the old gallery system within WordPress.

Why should I trust this plugin?

It seems these days that the good Gutenberg block plugins are all being acquired by larger companies. In this case, acquisition seems to be wearing well on the CoBlocks plugin as it has maintained it’s stellar rating in the WordPress repository, and has the backing of one of the largest WordPress hosting companies in the world, GoDaddy. 

Atomic Blocks, the building blocks of an awesome Genesis site

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Back when server-side includes were a thing, and custom PHP websites ran rampant, building a functional website took a ton of time and in some cases, a team of developers. If you visited one of the handfuls of beautifully designed sites on the web at that time, they were likely built by brands that had coffers deeper than the lifetime revenue of most small businesses. These days, the right Genesis theme combined with a powerful Gutenberg block builder like Atomic Blocks changes the graphical game for independent builders and small businesses alike.

Over the next few months, we’re taking a deep dive into ways you can create elegant experiences for site visitors through the use of new and powerful block builders.

What is Atomic Blocks good at?

Atomic Blocks began its block-making journey with straightforward blocks that helped to shortcut common layout changes. From testimonials to author profiles and accordions to share icons, the plugin started as a way to help site builders create faster. Today, Atomic Blocks is pushing further into the visual site building space by introducing section and layout blocks that help creators build immersive full-page layouts similar to what you might be able to make with other purpose-made site builders. These layouts (new in the 2.0 release) are a super power we are excited to add to future 9seeds themes.

atomic blocks homepage

How does Atomic Blocks work?

Any Gutenberg-based block builder requires users to have a Gutenberg friendly theme. Genesis is Gutenberg ready, and some specialized themes make working with block layouts particularly easy. Before you begin building, check in with your theme developer to make sure they offer full support for both Gutenberg and Atomic Blocks. Then, just like any other plugin, simply install the Atomic Blocks plugin to enable the extended functionality it provides.

Next, head over to create a page and create your first visual layout using Atomic Blocks.

atomic blocks in Gutenberg

As you start building, make sure to check your work on the front-end to make sure that your theme is properly handling layout components.

Why should I trust this plugin?

The team behind Atomic blocks joined WP Engine shortly after WP Engine acquired StudioPress. That means that today, Atomic and StudioPress work side by side inside WP Engine.  Combined they’re both fueled by one of the most experienced and biggest WordPress companies in the industry. Acquisition aside, the repository page for Atomic Blocks shows 20k+ installations, active development, and an incredibly high 4.5 star rating. Overall, this is a solid plugin with the promise of continued development into the foreseeable future. That’s a win win.

Case Study: Gamifying PeepSo for a Growing Member Community

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While requests for community websites and gamification are fairly common, building a fully integrated custom game within communities is much less so — and we love an interesting project. That’s why, when Intergalactic Postal Service approached 9seeds to create a game within their online community sidebar on a tight timeline, we excitedly responded, “game on”.

IPS is building a cool themed community, and wanted to debut the new social-integrated game at an upcoming comic book convention to their loyal members. Since the delivery deadline was two weeks away, we needed to find the most efficient combination of technology to accomplish the task.

Luckily, IPS was using PeepSo, an easily extensible member community plugin for WordPress that we often recommend. While it has a smaller user base than BuddyPress, it’s a more tightly integrated package and more full featured out of the box. This was going to be the first time we added gamification to PeepSo though.

The game build

The build for this social-enabled game was fairly straightforward from a standalone standpoint, the interesting part was integrating it seamlessly into the PeepSo community.

General requirements

  • The game is turn-based.
  • Activities must happen asynchronously.
  • The game must work within the PeepSo sidebar as a widget.
  • Players are notified about activities within the game via the PeepSo notification system.

Gameplay

  • A player initiates an action and other players are able to interact with the player based on that action.
  • A master dispatcher announces each interaction to the PeepSo activity stream.
  • Non-player characters occasionally interact with real players when site activity is down.
  • Master dispatch user is able to actively interact with the live chat plugin to let a player know directly when something happened to them (as well as who was responsible) to allow for swift counter-action.

Building the integration

PeepSo has a slick, JavaScript-heavy user interface. In order to seamlessly integrate with the technology and UX of the site, the game would also need to load and run using the same JavaScript framework and interactivity. That meant adding custom JavaScript using standard WordPress methods; and Ajax calls to the backend for the widget.

Within the PeepSo profile area, there’s a PeepSo-specific widget area that only PeepSo widgets work within, and it deviates a bit from how widgets normally work within WordPress. PeepSo support was great at providing code examples to help implement the widget, and in turn the game into a PeepSo widget.

Once the widget shell was added, game was coded, and notifications integration was planned out, it was time to start hooking into the site’s social features.

Hooking into PeepSo

To get the system messages into the community timeline, we used a helper function to interact with PeepSo:

public static function peepso( $owner, $user, $msg ) {
  $activity = PeepSoActivity::get_instance(); 
  $result = $activity->add_post( $owner, $user, $msg ); 
}

Next we built the private chat between Game Master and user:

$model = new PeepSoMessagesModel();
$msg_id = $model->create_new_conversation($gm, $msg, '', array($pm,$userid));

The final step before client testing was to add a public audit log (or leaderboard with stats) to encourage deeper engagement. We made quick work of adding a new tab in the PeepSo user profile area along with companion visibility and permissions options in the PeepSo administration console.

Game On

And just like that, it was time to test the game mechanics, display, UX, and messaging hooks.

What we had originally thought might be an extremely involved project was made easier by some excellent integration framework and support from the PeepSo team.

Have an interesting PeepSo integration project you’d love to get started on? Get in touch and let us know how we can help!

The Jessica theme has a new superpower

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With the most recent update, Jessica is getting a new superpower, and we’re pretty excited. As WordPress has modernized it’s editor, we’ve been busy upgrading the Jessica theme to include advanced block support which greatly extends the capabilities of this feature-rich theme.

WooCommerce blocks are an elegant way to add products to posts and pages, and today we’re announcing full support for the WooCommerce Blocks plugin within the Jessica Theme to help you more tightly integrate products with content!

Have you been looking for a snazzy way to add grids, testimonials, accordions, and a whole bunch of other advanced layouts to your WooCommerce website? The Atomic Blocks plugin can help, and it now works seamlessly with the Jessica Theme after the latest update.

Social sharing and call-to-actions are essential for optimizing your online store, and CoBlocks is a page builder plugin specifically designed for the creation of these advanced types of blocks. To help you get the most out of CoBlocks, Jessica is now 100% compatible with this excellent plugin.

While you could use all three of these plugins together, we’re not suggesting you need to.  There is a lot of overlap between Atomic Blocks and CoBlocks, but each has it’s own unique set of features.

There are a couple minor updates to this release as well, including:

  • Landing Page Template for pure landing pages.
  • Block Template for a full-width layout ideal for page builders and blocks.

If you run a WooCommerce website, go here to grab this highly flexible powerhouse theme, and make sure to update your theme if you’re currently using Jessica.