Debugging WordPress

[JLX89]

Hello All!
I'm fairly certain I'm just missing something -- but I'm having issues debugging WordPress. I'm having an issue with Elementor and need to see any WordPress / PHP errors. I've changed the following in wp-config.php and restarted the app to no avail. The debug log doesn't seem to be created or logging in /wp-content/debug.log.

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

[murgero]

@jlx89 Try adding this to the config:

define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG','/app/data/output.log' ); This should tell wordpress to output to /app/data/output.log which is outside the web root and also in a writable area of the container.

[girish]

In addition to what @murgero said, you can also put things in /run/debug.log or /tmp/debug.log as well. Note that the files under /tmp are cleaned up automatically periodically, so this can either be a plus or minus depending on your use case.

[JLX89]

@murgero Thank you! I gave that a shot, but it still doesn't seem to be working. I am using the "WordPress Developer)" app -- but can migrate this over to a LAMP Stack, if needed.

@girish Thank you! I'll give the /run/debug.log option a shot. I'd like to be able to view them as needed, rather than having it stored in the /tmp/ directory.

[girish]

@jlx89 said in Debugging WordPress:

I am using the "WordPress Developer)" app -- but can migrate this over to a LAMP Stack, if needed.

The WP Developer app is essentially the same.

I quickly tried this out. I blindly put the defines you posted at the end of file and it did not work as well :-). It turns out, this was because in wp-config.php, those constants are already defined. In around lines 75-77:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', false );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', false );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );

I had to remove those duplicate lines, since I guess PHP does not allow re-defining constants.

After removing them, I added some junk in headers.php like random_function(); and I see that debug.log is created once I visit WP.

[JLX89]

@girish Yes, I had originally added them at the bottom of wp-config.php and realized they were already defined and changed the values. I added the following and restarted the app, to no avail. I'll give that another shot and see if that works out.

[girish]

@jlx89 I noticed the file is not created, unless there is a real error. Did you put some error in a PHP file ? error_log also works.

[JLX89]

@girish Yes, I did that -- error-log doesn't seem to be created nor is anything logged in /wp-content/debug.log.

[girish]

@jlx89 I setup a test here - https://my.demo.cloudron.io/#/app/cc6803b8-c862-4a2b-8c12-e25c9a092592 . I put a bad func call here - https://my.demo.cloudron.io/filemanager.html?type=app&id=cc6803b8-c862-4a2b-8c12-e25c9a092592#public/wp-includes/functions.php . Maybe you can check what is different...

[JLX89]

@girish So I replicated what you had done in the demo. So that seems to be working now -- after I disabled the plugins we have installed. I'm going to work through and go one-by-one on the plugins and see what is going on. This seems to be a really odd issue.