How to Enable Debugging in WordPress: A Step-by-Step Guide

Debugging is an essential part of WordPress development and maintenance, as it helps identify issues such as errors, warnings, and notices within your site’s code. Whether you’re a developer troubleshooting a custom plugin or a website owner trying to diagnose a slow-loading page, enabling WordPress debug mode can provide valuable insights into what’s going wrong.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to enable WordPress debug mode and interpret the messages it generates.

What Is WordPress Debugging?

WordPress debugging is a feature that allows you to log and display error messages for your website. When debugging is enabled, WordPress can display detailed error messages, including PHP warnings, notices, and fatal errors. This can help you identify issues with your themes, plugins, or custom code.

There are two primary ways to debug WordPress:

  1. WP_DEBUG – This is the main setting that enables or disables debug mode.
  2. WP_DEBUG_LOG – This logs debug messages to a file for later review.
  3. WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY – This controls whether debug messages are displayed on the front end or not.
  4. SCRIPT_DEBUG – Forces WordPress to use the uncompressed versions of CSS and JavaScript files for better debugging.

Let’s look at how to enable these settings and use them effectively.

Step-by-Step Instructions to Enable Debugging in WordPress

1. Access Your WordPress Site’s Files

Before you can enable debugging, you need access to your site’s files. This can be done through:

  • cPanel File Manager (if your host provides a control panel)
  • FTP/SFTP Client (like FileZilla)
  • SSH Access (for advanced users)

In this guide, we’ll focus on editing the wp-config.php file, which is located in the root directory of your WordPress installation.

2. Edit the wp-config.php File

Once you’ve located the wp-config.php file, open it for editing. This file contains the configuration settings for your WordPress installation, including your database credentials and other key settings.

Add or Modify Debugging Settings

To enable debugging, add the following lines to the wp-config.php file. If these lines already exist, just modify their values accordingly.