Helper Plugins
There are certain WordPress plugins that enable us to debug PHP Errors, actions and filters, enqueued scripts and stylesheets, remote HTTP requests etc. In this section we’re going to enlist those and give a brief about those plugins and tell you how those can be useful while developing WordPress websites.
Query Monitor
Query Monitor provides a developer tools panel for WordPress. It includes some advanced features such as debugging of Ajax calls, REST API calls, and user capability checks.
This plugin should always be active in your development environment.
Here’s a brief introduction about the plugin and what information it displays and where.
WP Crontrol
WP Crontrol enables you to view and control what’s happening in the WP-Cron system. From the admin screens you can:
- View all cron events along with their arguments, recurrence, callback functions, and when they are next due.
- Edit, delete, and immediately run any cron events.
- Add new cron events.
- Bulk delete cron events.
- Add and remove custom cron schedules.
- Export cron event lists as a CSV file.
This plugin is helpful in debugging the issues with WordPress Cron, whether the cron events are being scheduled and fired or not.
User Switching
This plugin allows you to quickly swap between user accounts in WordPress. Without this plugin you’ll need to set the password for a given user with which you want to test out a certain functionality, and then login back to the WordPress site and that is a time consuming process.
Helpful when:
- Issues are happening only for a certain users, and not all users.
- There’s a need to test functionality for different user roles.