Diagnostic Glance

Description

Sometimes there are challenges to creating a WordPress site that are beyond your current understanding. When that happens, it’s time to ask people in a forum or email a friend. They’ll probably be better able to help diagnose your challenges if they can quickly scan some of the basic settings of your site, your site’s host, and gain a general idea of the number of posts, pages and media that are on your site.

This widget resides on the dashboard and uses the standard dashboard widget “Configure” link. It can be easily hidden or revealed via the screen options pulldown, just like any other dashboard item. It can be dragged to either column to suit your needs.

These are the items this plugin lists:

• WordPress Version
• Themes alphabetically with version and the active theme indicated, plus the total number of installed themes.
• Plugins alphabetically with version and activation indicated, plus the number of active and total plugins.
• WordPress Config with various configured settings that could be helpful.
• Hosting and System Config with Server version, PHP version, MySQL version, some PHP settings.
• PHP Extensions alphabetically, comma-separated, 4 to a row.
• Apache Modules alphabetically, comma-separated, 3 to a row, if the information is available.
• General Site Statistics should be self evident.

Screenshots

Installation

1. Get the zipped file diagnostic_glance.zip.
2. Unzip it to its own folder diagnostic_glance.
3. Upload diagnostic_glance to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
4. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
5. Go to the dashboard from the admin menu to view the Diagnostic Glance dashboard.

FAQ

How do I use this nifty tool?

1. Navigate to the dashboard in your WordPress website.
2. Locate the Diagnostic Glance panel.
3. If diagnostic information isn’t showing up, click Configure to show sections and Submit.
4. Click the Copy to Clipboard button. The relevant data will be ready to paste.
5. Type ctrl-c or cmd-c on your windows or apple keyboard to copy the selected data to your clipboard if you are using an older browser.
6. Alternatively, copy the shortcode and paste it alone into a page. Share the link for the page on WordPress help forums to reduce clutter in your post.
7. Click configure to show or hide various diagnostic sections. Verbose Listing will reveal headers for missing sections.

Are any of the items listed by Diagnostic Glance a security risk?

1. All of the information you’ll gather using this plugin is safe to share with other WordPress enthusiasts.
2. All information shared is relatively free of security risks.
3. You can hide sections that you don’t think people need to see.
4. WP sites that are not updated regularly are a security risk. Unpublish any public shortcodes if core, plugins or themes are old and you aren’t planning on updating any time soon.

Why isn’t anything showing except the WordPress version?

1. Click the “Configure” link at the top of the Diagnostic Glance Dashboard bar. (See screenshots 1 and 2.)
2. A form will appear.
3. Check the sections you would like to appear.
4. Checking “Verbose Listing” will reveal headers for hidden sections . If unchecked, hidden section headers are also hidden.
5. Click “Submit”.
6. For most situations, you could probably check every item except “Site Stats” and “Verbose Listing”.

Once I have the information selected, what do I do with it?

There are a number of extremely helpful forums and forum members out there that enjoy helping others get their WordPress websites up and running smoothly. Here are a number of forums that may be useful to you depending on your level of expertise. Listing below does not necessarily constitute endorsement of the listed sites.

1. www.remarpro.com Forum
2. WordPress.com Forum
3. WordPress Development – Stack Exchange
4. WordPress Stack Overflow

The selected text isn’t very fancy. Why is that?

The text is rendered as text-only, just exactly as if you were typing it in a secure shell terminal. The text will copy and paste easily into any forum with little fuss, and will still be reasonably legible by forum readers.

What does the [a] mean next to each theme and plugin?

When the theme or plugin is prefixed with [a] instead of an empty box [ ], it means this particular theme or plugin is active. There will only ever be one active theme, but there may be multiple active plugins. The total number of active plugins will show at the bottom of the plugins list.

Why won’t the text select/copy when I press “Copy to Clipboard”?

WordPress depends on javascript to function normally. Make sure javascript is enabled in your browser. If you are unable to make it work in your preferred browser — let’s say it’s Firefox — try Chrome or Opera until you can get help from your IT person or tech guru.

Why is there an asterisk after “default” in the WordPress configuration section after some settings?

Your wp-config.php file may contain settings that are not otherwise explicitly defined. For example, if we don’t define it in wp-config.php, the WP_DEBUG setting is not only not set, it’s not even defined. If it’s not defined, WordPress still has a default action. In this case, when not defined in wp-config.php, WP_DEBUG is not active.

Reviews

No longer compatible

Arneby November 18, 2019

Does not work with WP 5.3. Does enqueueing the wrong way compared to current WP practice. From log: Notice: wp_enqueue_script was called incorrectly. Scripts and styles should not be registered or enqueued until the wp_enqueue_scripts, admin_enqueue_scripts, or login_enqueue_scripts hooks.

Perfect

D September 3, 2016

I wish I’d found this sooner! Does exactly as described and worked perfectly. Thank you very much for this plugin. I’m sorry to see the low number of installs and no other reviews yet. Please don’t get discouraged – I’m sure if people knew about this plugin, they’d find it super useful. Surely all the lost souls in the support forums would be able to better communicate with WP gurus if they’d use this plugin! Please continue to maintain and update this plugin!

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

1.0

• Now with configuration for showing/hiding sections of information.
• Reworked much of the code for better WP methodology and robustness.

0.9.6

• WordPress 5.1 compatible.
• Fixed text overflow on dashboard widget.

0.9.5

• Fixed a bug that affected dashboard widget placement.

0.9.4

• One-button click for copying full diagnostics from the dashboard to the clipboard.
• Reduce forum clutter by linking to a page with your shortcoded diagnostic glance.

0.9.3

• Confirmed compatibility with WordPress 4.9.9.

0.9.2

• Added PHP SAPI info.
• Reformatted Apache info so that it only shows up when Apache info is available.

0.9.1

• Now also lists available php extensions and apache modules. Some code tweaks.

0.9

• Minor updates

0.8

• Original Release