How To Turn On WordPress Debug Mode On WPAlpha

WordPress debug mode is useful for troubleshooting issues and errors with plugins, themes and PHP versions.

Your WP Alpha hosting platform allows you to enable WordPress debugging with a single click, so you do not have to edit the wp-config.php file yourself.

In this article and video we walk you through the process of enabling WordPress debugging in your WP Alpha hosting admin backend, reading the log, and switching it off again.

Step by step

1. Log in to the hosting admin panel, open the site and go to the WordPress tab. The same controls are also available in the WordPress manager.
2. Find the Debugging toggle. Before switching it on, click the control beside it to open the slide-out panel of debug options.
3. Turn off the option that displays errors. On a live site this would show error messages to your visitors.
4. Leave the debug log file option on, then save.
5. Switch the Debugging toggle on.
6. Load the page or repeat the action that causes the problem, so the error is written to the log.
7. Open File Manager, go to the wp-content folder and open debug.log to read the errors.
8. When you have finished troubleshooting, switch the Debugging toggle off.

What it changes in wp-config.php

The toggle adds the debug lines to wp-config.php for you. With the settings above, it sets WP_DEBUG to true, WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY to false so errors are not shown to visitors, and WP_DEBUG_LOG to true so errors are written to the log file. When debugging is off, WP_DEBUG is false.

Things to check

• No debug.log file? It only appears once an error has been logged, so if nothing has gone wrong yet there is nothing to show.
• The log can get very big very quickly on a site with a lot of errors, so do not leave debugging on longer than you need it.
• You can delete debug.log when you are done. It is recreated the next time an error is logged.
• Read the errors for clues. In the video, the log showed a PHP error because the PHP version was too new for the site’s theme, which meant the theme needed an update.

If you are not sure what the log is telling you, our support team can help via a ticket from the client area or live chat.