I once updated a simple contact form plugin, hit refresh, and my entire site turned into a white screen. No error message. No warning. Just a blank page staring back at me.
I jumped into FTP, disabled the plugin, but the site was still broken. After nearly 20 minutes of clicking around like a confused detective, I finally uncovered the real issue. And it wasn’t what I initially thought.
If you’ve been there, you know how frustrating this feels. Most WordPress site owners end up Googling random fixes, hoping something sticks. Unfortunately, that approach usually wastes hours and rarely solves the problem properly.
The better solution? Use troubleshooting tools that actually tell you what broke. These tools don’t make you guess – they point directly at the problem, whether it’s a plugin that takes up memory, a slow database query, or a theme file throwing errors.
I’m going to tell you about the tools that have saved my sites more times than I can count.
Why WordPress Sites Break (And Why You Need These Tools)
WordPress runs about 43% of the entire internet, which sounds impressive until you realize millions of people are probably dealing with broken sites right this second.
Most crashes occur due to plugin conflicts after updates. Someone pushes a new version that doesn’t get along with your other plugins. Or maybe your theme has some janky code that clashes with everything. Sometimes it’s your cheap hosting running an outdated PHP version, or your site hits its memory limit and just gives up.
When something breaks, you’ve got two choices: spend hours disabling plugins one by one through cPanel and hoping you find the issue, or grab a tool that shows you exactly what’s wrong in about three minutes.
I’ll take the three-minute option every single time. Downtime costs you visitors, sales, and trust – whether you’re running a store, a blog, or a business site. Every minute your site stays down, someone’s clicking away to your competitor.
Top 10 Free WordPress Troubleshooting Tools
1. Health Check & Troubleshooting
This plugin runs a comprehensive health checkup of your site without affecting what your visitors see. It looks for outdated PHP, plugin conflicts, theme issues, and server issues that might cause crashes.
Troubleshooting mode turns off all your plugins and switches to a default theme, but only for you. Your visitors still see your normal site while you’re testing what broke.
You can turn plugins back on one at a time until you find the troublemaker. Once you know which plugin’s causing chaos, you disable it for good or bug the developer to fix it.
2. Query Monitor
When pages start loading slower than molasses, Query Monitor tells you why. It tracks database queries, PHP errors, HTTP requests, and every script loading on your pages.
You get a toolbar in your WordPress admin showing performance data as it happens. You’ll see which queries take forever, which plugins are hammering your database with hundreds of calls, and where PHP is throwing errors.
Even if you’re not a developer, spotting a plugin making 500 database queries on one page doesn’t take a computer science degree. That’s your problem right there.
3. WP Rollback
Plugin updates break stuff sometimes. WP Rollback lets you revert to the version that actually worked with just a couple of clicks.
This saves you when an automatic update introduces bugs or conflicts. Instead of panicking and disabling the plugin completely, you just roll it back to the last stable version.
The rollback button sits right on your plugins page next to each plugin, so you don’t need to dig through code or mess with FTP.
4. Debug Bar
Debug Bar adds a debugging menu to your admin toolbar that shows PHP warnings, database queries, cache stats, and
What makes it useful for regular folks? It catches those small PHP warnings that don’t break your site yet, but probably will eventually. Fixing them early beats dealing with a crashed site later.
It also works with other debugging tools through add-ons, giving you even deeper insights into what WordPress is doing when pages load.
5. Theme Check
If you think your theme’s causing problems, Theme Check scans the files for coding mistakes, outdated functions, and security holes.
It ensures your theme follows WordPress standards and doesn’t contain outdated code that conflicts with modern plugins or core updates.
The scan shows specific problems and how to fix them. That helps you decide whether to update the theme, switch to a better one, or contact the person who built it.
6. Broken Link Checker
Broken links affect your SEO and annoy people who click them expecting to find something useful. This plugin scans your entire site for dead internal links, external links, and missing images.
It tells you when it finds broken links and lets you edit or delete them straight from your dashboard, instead of hunting through 100 posts.
Running regular link checks keeps your site looking professional and keeps search engines happy.
7. Asset CleanUp
Some plugins load CSS and JavaScript files on every single page, even when they’re not doing anything. That bloats your pages and slows everything down.
Asset CleanUp shows which files each plugin loads on each page. You can disable the ones that aren’t actually needed, which cuts page weight and speeds up loading without breaking anything.
This helps a ton if you’ve got lots of plugins installed and your site’s getting sluggish due to all the extra baggage.
8. User Switching
Testing user permissions means logging out and back in with different accounts, which gets old fast. User Switching lets you jump between user accounts instantly without logging out.
Makes it super easy to check that permissions, role restrictions, or membership features work right for different user types.
You can switch back to your admin account with a single click, which speeds up testing when you’re diagnosing user-specific issues.
9. Code Snippets
Adding custom code to your theme’s functions.php file is playing with fire – one typo crashes your entire site. Code Snippets gives you a safer way to add custom PHP, CSS, and JavaScript.
Each snippet can be turned on or off separately. If your custom code causes problems, you flip it off without needing FTP or losing your other customizations.
It’s got built-in error handling that prevents fatal errors from taking down your site if you accidentally write broken code.
10. WordPress Site Health (Built-in)
WordPress comes with a Site Health tool under Tools > Site Health that checks for common setup issues, security problems, and performance concerns.
It runs automated tests and suggests improvements such as updating PHP versions, fixing file permissions, or enabling HTTPS.
It’s not as detailed as dedicated debugging plugins, but it gives you a quick health snapshot without installing anything extra.
Quick Comparison: Which Tool Should You Use?
| Problem | Best Tool | Why It Works |
| Site crashes after update | WP Rollback | Goes back to the working version instantly |
| Slow page loads | Query Monitor | Shows exact database & performance problems |
| Testing plugin conflicts | Health Check | Troubleshoots without affecting visitors |
| PHP errors are showing up | Debug Bar | Displays errors privately in admin |
| Broken links are hurting SEO | Broken Link Checker | Scans your whole site automatically |
| Theme causing issues | Theme Check | Finds theme code problems |
| Plugins slowing site | Asset CleanUp | Removes unnecessary loaded files |
I keep Query Monitor running for ongoing performance watching, use Health Check for regular diagnostics, and always have WP Rollback installed as insurance against bad updates.
Pro Tips: Troubleshooting Like an Expert
Always back up your site before you start poking around with wordpress troubleshooting tools. Even the safe ones can occasionally cause weird issues on unique setups. BigCloudy’s managed WordPress hosting throws in automatic daily backups with every plan, which has saved me more than once.
Test big changes on a staging site first, not on your live site, where real people are browsing. Most decent hosts give you one-click staging environments where you can break stuff without consequences.
Keep WordPress core, themes, and plugins regularly updated, as outdated software is the primary cause of conflicts, errors, and security holes. Schedule updates when you’re not getting much traffic, so fewer people notice if something goes sideways.
Check your error logs once a week, even when everything looks fine. Small issues show up in logs way before they cause visible problems. Catching them early beats dealing with a crashed site at 2 AM.
Conclusion
WordPress troubleshooting doesn’t have to result in hours of frustration anymore. The right tools would show you exactly what broke, where it broke, and how to fix it fast.
Install Health Check & Troubleshooting and WP Rollback today as your insurance against future problems. Throw in Query Monitor if performance matters to your site, and keep these tools ready for when things go sideways. Test these tools now while your site’s working fine, so you’ll know how to use them when something actually breaks. Solid WordPress hosting from BigCloudy, plus the right troubleshooting tools, means you can fix any issue quickly and get back to what matters.
FAQs
Jump into FTP or your hosting file manager and rename the plugins folder to “plugins. disable,” which turns off all plugins at once. If the white screen goes away, rename it back to “plugins” and use Health Check to figure out which specific plugin caused the crash.
Yep, Health Check & Troubleshooting creates a private session that only affects what you see as admin. Visitors continue to see the normal site while you safely test plugins and themes without causing public errors.
Turn off all plugins and see if the problem disappears. If it does, turn the plugins back on one at a time until the issue returns. The last plugin you activated is probably the troublemaker or at least part of the problem.
Contact your hosting support team right away, as they can access your site using server-level tools that bypass WordPress entirely. Good hosts like BigCloudy offer 24/7 support specifically for these emergency situations.
Most of these tools have safety features that prevent accidental damage. Health Check, WP Rollback, and Code Snippets all include built-in safeguards, but you should still back up your site before troubleshooting just to be safe.
Run a full diagnostic with the Site Health or Health Check plugin at least once a month. Also, run checks right after major updates, before adding new plugins, or whenever you notice performance getting worse.
