For info on testing for conflicts and other troubleshooting tips, see: Self-Service Guide.

Installation

Download the Health Check plugin from the WordPress.org repository, and upload and install the .zip file to your WordPress/WooCommerce site.

Or use the WordPress Dashboard:

1. Log in to your WordPress/WooCommerce site.
2. Go to: Plugins > Add New.
3. Search for Health Check & Troubleshooting.
4. Select Install Now, and then Activate.

Usage

Backup

Before troubleshooting, it’s best practice to make a backup of your site as a failsafe. More info at: Backing Up WordPress Content.

Overview

Health Check includes a good, general overview of your WordPress installation. In comparison, the WooCommerce System Status Log is more in-depth.

To access the Health Check overview, go to: Tools > Site Health:

Troubleshooting

Health Check’s true power is its troubleshooting mode, allowing you to switch the theme and test plugins without impacting visitors to your site.

To troubleshoot, go to Tools > Site Health > Troubleshooting and then select Enable Troubleshooting Mode.

Once in Troubleshooting Mode, you can control which theme and plugins are enabled in the troubleshooting session. Initially, all plugins are disabled.

To test WooCommerce, go to Plugins, and click Enable while Troubleshooting

When viewing your site, you’ll see your own specific session where the theme and plugins are set by Health Check. When visitors view your site, it appears normal.

At this point, perform any necessary tests. If necessary, you can enable further plugins while troubleshooting, from the Plugins page.

Note that Troubleshooting Mode does not put a payment gateway into sandbox mode, so if you place an order while in troubleshooting mode, live payment will be taken.

To disable Troubleshooting Mode at any time, selecting Disable Troubleshooting Mode on your site’s Dashboard or via the Admin bar.

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A conflict is an error or malfunction caused by two parts of code giving conflicting signals. For example, plugin A gives the signal to put the order in “Completed” status and plugin B prevents this from happening.

Themes and plugins provide additional functionality and features — it also means more code is running on your website and the risk of incompatibility is higher. We strive to ensure compatibility with our own extensions, but third-party products made for WooCommerce are not guaranteed to work with our software. In this documentation page, we will explain how to test for plugin and theme conflicts.

How to do a conflict test

Testing is the only way to determine what is causing a conflict.

Backups and staging

We highly recommend making a backup of your site. Deactivating and reactivating plugins typically doesn’t cause issues, but having a good backup will save you a lot of time and energy on the rare occasion it does.

Most hosting providers offer a backup plan. If not, there are two options:

• Consider Jetpack Backup
• Use a Staging site – This is a clone of your production site — one that is processing orders and has visitors — where you can safely test conflicts without your live site being affected and potentially losing revenue. Most hosting providers can help with this. Or, on most hosting platforms, you can also use the WP Staging plugin to create a clone in your Dashboard.

Deactivation and testing

To troubleshoot theme and plugin conflicts:

1. Switch to a default WordPress theme, such as Twenty Nineteen to see if the issue persists.
   • If no, your theme is causing the issue. You can: a) change your theme; b) contact the author of the theme and ask them to fix it.
   • If yes, go to the next step.
2. Temporarily deactivate all plugins except WooCommerce and the WooCommerce extensions you’re experiencing issues with.
3. Test if the conflict still exists. How to test it, depends on what type of conflict you were experiencing.
   • If the conflict occurred while browsing your site or the Dashboard, go to the same location. Examples of this would be:
     • A feature not working on the product edit screen
     • A button not showing on the cart page
   • If the conflict only happens after a certain process, recreate and follow those identical steps. Examples of this would be:
     • An order is marked “On Hold” instead of “Completed” after product A is added and paid for.
     • An error displays while adding two products to the cart.
   • If the conflict no longer exists, it means that the theme or plugins/extensions you deactivated were causing the conflict. If the conflict still exists, see ‘Drop-Ins and Must-Use’ and ‘Unsuccessful Conflict Tests’ below.
4. Determine which plugin is causing the conflict by:
   • reactivating them one by one
   • testing again after each reactivation. For process-related conflicts, this means recreating the same process over and over again.

Helpful tools

• Health Check is useful for debugging and requires an official default WordPress theme such as Twenty Nineteen or our own Storefront. With a few clicks, it deactivates all plugins and changes the theme while you’re logged in to that session and normal visitors to your site are unaffected. More details at: Troubleshooting with Health Check.
• Meks Quick Plugin Disabler remembers what plugins you had active when you’re done testing.

Drop-ins and must-use

On some sites is a “Must-Use” and/or “Drop-ins” section in the plugins list. These cannot be deactivated by you directly, but they can be the cause of the conflict.

• Some of these plugins are installed by another plugin. The function as a “helper plugin”. While doing a conflict test, deactivating those other “parent” plugins will also deactivate these ones.
• Also, many hosting companies use drop-in and/or must-use plugins that they pre-install on your site because it helps with their server setup.

If the conflict persists in the latter case while doing the above tests, it might be caused by a drop-in installed by your host. For example, we’ve seen conflicts caused by drop-in caching plugins. In this case, you need to contact your hosting company for help with deactivation.

Unsuccessful conflict tests

Should nothing change/resolve with issues and/or errors you’re experiencing after testing for conflicts, it likely means there is another cause. Contact a WooCommerce.com Happiness Engineer via our Support Ticket. Please include a detailed description of:

• Steps which can be taken to replicate the issue
• Conflict tests you performed to exclude conflicts

The post How to Test for Plugin and Theme Conflicts first appeared on CODIBU.

The Understanding the WooCommerce System Status Report documentation page goes through the full report and related pages of the System Status.

Why check the system status?

It is important to know how to check your WooCommerce system status for a number of reasons, the following of which are outlined in the video tutorial below.

• How to check if you have the latest versions of the core WooCommerce plugin, the WooCommerce database, and your extensions.
• How to increase your PHP memory, if you have problems saving data (such as many variations).
• Payment Gateway transactions not logging aka logging is not writable.
• How to fix broken WooCommerce pages.
• How to rule out theme conflicts due to outdated theme template files.

The post Troubleshooting 101: Review WooCommerce System Status Report first appeared on CODIBU.

So with your precious data and content stored in different places, how should you safeguard it and keep it backed up?

Automatic backups

The most efficient and reliable approach is to use an automated site backup service for which we recommend Jetpack. Besides not having to rely on memory and manual procedures, you instantly benefit from:

• Unlimited storage space.
• Automated, regular backups of your entire site including database, content, media, plugins, themes, and settings.
• Instant restore service so that if something goes wrong you revert to an older version with one click.
• Direct access to 24/7 expert support.

Manual backups

If you wanted to do things the hard way, there are two parts to backing up your site content manually.

1. Go to Tools > Export – to export all of your site content. This contains all of your posts, pages, comments, etc. in a XML file.
2. To back up your theme files and plugin files, log into your site via FTP to find your files in the wp-content  folder. We strongly recommend making a backup of your theme files if you made any customizations.

Learn more

• WordPress backups at the WordPress Codex.
• Jetpack’s backup and security services.

We provide expert priority support for Jetpack customers but not third-party plugins.

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Prefer a written version of how to troubleshoot your site? No problem! Check out our Self Service Guide to Troubleshooting an Issue here.

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Pinpoint the Error

Here is an example of an fatal error similar to what you may see on your site:
 Fatal error: Call to a member function get_cart() on a non-object in .../html/wp-content/plugins/example-plugin-for-woocommerce/woo-integration/example-cart.php on line 2117  You will notice the message references /wp-content/plugins/example-plugin-for-woocommerce/ as the cause of the error. This means we need to either try updating that plugin or disable it to get around the error.

Log in to your site via FTP

Since you cannot log into your site via the WordPress Admin, accessing the folders containing these files via FTP is our only option.

If you are not familiar with how to connect to your website using FTP, it is best if you contact your hosting provider for further instructions.

Rename the conflicting plugin folder

Once you’ve logged into your site, navigate to the conflicting plugin folder.

By renaming the plugin folder you’ve effectively ‘disabled’ it, allowing you to once again access your WordPress Admin, which would then display the following error:

The plugin ‘does not exist’ because we renamed the folder.

Resolve the root of the issue

Many times we find customers contact us in support due to a conflict with an outdated third party extension or theme. If the plugin or theme was not developed and purchased directly from WooCommerce.com, we are not able to help troubleshoot this issue further. At this point, we would have to ask that you please contact the third party theme or plugin developer directly for assistance.

Updating is the most important step towards getting a quick resolution

Woo product causing error

If the theme or plugin causing the error is determined to be a Woo product, ensure that you have the latest version of the theme/plugin before contacting us.

To confirm you are running the latest version:

1. Log into WooCommerce.com and go to the My Downloads page.
2. Locate the product to confirm the version number matches the version number of the plugin on your site.

If updating the product does not help, you can open a new ticket and our Happiness Engineers would be happy to assist you.

Third-party product conflicts

When purchasing themes or extensions from third party developers, it can be helpful to ensure that the developer is reliable and responsive before you purchase or install the extension on your site.

If they do not stay up to date with WooCommerce API updates that are announced on woocommerce.wordpress.com, you run the risk of their files being outdated and possible conflict with new versions of the API.

The post Troubleshooting 101: Plugin Causing Fatal Error first appeared on CODIBU.

A common error in WordPress is an HTTP 500 error and will look something like the image below. This is not descriptive and will not help narrow down the cause of the issue. In production sites, it is best practice to show a generic error such as this one, but for the purposes of troubleshooting, we need more information.

Debugging

For most users getting more information is easy.

1. FTP into your website
2. Open the file named wp-config.php
3. Find the line where you see define('WP_DEBUG', false);
4. Change false to true and save the file

The next time you refresh the page you were getting an error on you should now see more descriptive error messages which will help in troubleshooting.

If the line is already set to true you may have another plugin or server configuration which is suppressing the error output.

The post Troubleshooting 101: More Info on Internal Server 500 Error first appeared on CODIBU.

WooCommerce Fatal Errors Log

WooCommerce 3.2 introduced a log that displays PHP fatal errors. This log can contain pertinent information that would be found in the PHP error logs. It is a good place to start before moving to finding the PHP logs on the server.

To access the WooCommerce Fatal Errors log:

1. Go to WooCommerce > Status > Logs
2. Choose a log from the drop-down labeled fatal-errors.log
3. Click View

Example log:

The types of errors caught in this log are PHP fatal errors, runtime errors, and errors purposely triggered in the code by a PHP function. Runtime errors can occur when there is a typo in the code, for example.

Fatal errors occur when the action in the code cannot be completed. Examples of a fatal error include:

• Calling an undefined function
• Using an undefined variable
• Calling a function on a null or otherwise unusable variable

This does not include web server errors, such as timeouts.

The log will include the:

• Timestamp when the error occurred
• Error that occurred
• File and line in the code for the origination of the error
• Stack trace – a snapshot of the history of the function calls and files leading up to the error

PHP Error Logs on the Server

You can find the PHP error logs in a few possible places on the server:

• in your server’s root folder, called error.log
• in public_html or similar folder, called error.log
• in var/logs or similar, called error.log
• additionally, if you have debugging enabled in WordPress and you have it saved to a file, it will be in the wp-content folder, and called debug.log

If you’re having trouble finding the file, you can have PHP tell you where it is:

1. Create a file named phpinfo.php in the root of your WordPress’s directory
2. Open the phpinfo.php file in a text editor
3. Insert the following code into the file: <?php phpinfo(); ?>
4. Open the file on your site. For example, if your site’s URL is example.com, you can open the file by visiting http://example.com/phpinfo.php
5. Search the page for the error_log value. The file path listed here is the absolute file path of the PHP error log – visit that address on your server and you should find the PHP error log. If the value is empty, then you need to set a value to log errors on your site. See the picture below for how it should look like:

The post Finding PHP Error Logs first appeared on CODIBU.

Both extensions are dealing with a very sensitive subject: the pricing. You do not want to enable them on your website without proper testing first.

Install the extensions on a development/staging environment and make sure that things work well: when you change the currency, the prices are calculated correctly, from the category pages, single product, shopping cart, checkout, order. Check all the currencies you have on your website. With the Assistant, try its workflows and see that the sale events start and stop correctly, according to the rule parameters you specify.

When You Contact Technical Support

1. First, make sure you have the latest versions of WordPress, WooCommerce and all its extensions. It will be very hard for us to assist you with outdated software you might have installed.
2. Try to detect which combination of the active plugins causes the problem. Deactivate all the non-essential plugins first, then check the remaining for possible conflicts.
   • Pay special attention to plugins dealing with pricing. A notable example is the “Wholesale Pricing” suite, which is not compatible with Multi-currency. Please check the Compatibility document.
3. Write down the exact steps to reproduce the problem. Make screenshots showing all the steps.
4. Make also screenshots of the settings you have on the Multi-currency and Assistant tabs. We’ll need that information to be able to reproduce your environment on our server.
5. Submit a support ticket: https://woocommerce.com/my-account/create-a-ticket/.
   • In the tab “Help with my purchased products”, choose the “WooCommerce Multi-currency”, “WooCommerce Assistant” or “Paywall for Woocommerce” from the dropdown list.
     
   • If you are reporting a conflict between our extension and another plugin you have purchased from WooCommerce, please also submit the same ticket again, choosing the other extension from the list. This way, all parties will be aware of the issue.
   • Note: if the conflicting plugin is not one of the WooCommerce-sold products, regrettably, we won’t be able to assist you. Their authors, however, can. Ask them to contact us.
6. When you receive the confirmation from us that we’ve received your request, please reply with all the details and screenshots.

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