WordPress Site Health: Checking Your Site Status | How to Read Critical Issues and Recommended Improvements
WordPress Site Health is a feature under the Tools menu of the admin area that automatically checks items such as the PHP version, HTTPS and update status. I ran the 28 default checks on a WordPress 7.1.3 site and went through the causes and fixes for the items that came up as critical issues and recommended improvements.
1️⃣ The WordPress Site Health screen: the Status and Info tabs
Opening [Tools › Site Health] shows the [Status] and [Info] tabs, and the same results are also summarized in the [Site Health Status] widget on the WordPress dashboard home screen.
Some items fill in a little late right after the screen opens because 6 of the 28 checks, such as communication with WordPress.org, loopback requests and page cache, are requested separately by the browser after the screen has loaded.
The site health check shows information about your WordPress configuration and items that may need your attention.
Critical issues are items that may have a high impact on your site’s performance or security. Resolving these issues should be prioritized.
Recommended items are considered beneficial to your site, although not as important to prioritize as a critical issue. They may include improvements in areas such as security, performance, and user experience.
Plugins extend your site’s functionality with things like contact forms, ecommerce and much more. That means they have deep access to your site, so it’s vital to keep them up to date.
Your site has 2 plugins waiting to be updated.
Your site has 8 inactive plugins. Inactive plugins are tempting targets for attackers. If you are not going to use a plugin, you should consider removing it.
Plugin management Plugin updates Manage inactive plugins
Themes add your site’s look and feel. It’s important to keep them up to date, to stay consistent with your brand and keep your site secure.
Your site has 5 installed themes, and they are all up to date.
Your site has 4 inactive themes, other than Twenty Twenty-Five, your active theme. You should consider removing any unused themes to enhance your site’s security.
Manage your themes
The scheduled event, rocket_saas_pending_jobs, is late to run. Your site still works, but this may indicate that scheduling posts or automated updates may not work as intended.
A persistent object cache makes your site’s database more efficient, resulting in faster load times because WordPress can retrieve your site’s content and settings much more quickly.
Your hosting provider can tell you if a persistent object cache can be enabled on your site.
Learn more about persistent object caching.
This page can show you every detail about the configuration of your WordPress website. For any improvements that could be made, see the Site Health Status page.
If you want to export a handy list of all the information on this page, you can use the button below to copy it to the clipboard. You can then paste it in a text file and save it to your device, or paste it in an email exchange with a support engineer or theme/plugin developer for example.
2️⃣ How to read critical issues and recommended improvements
[Critical issues] are items that directly affect security or how the site works, while [recommended improvements] cause no problem right now but make things better once fixed. Each item also carries a category badge such as [Security] or [Performance].
In my test there were no [critical issues], only [recommended improvements], so the status was [Good]; the checks that passed only show up once you expand [Passed tests].
3️⃣ Common items and how to fix them
If there is even one inactive plugin, the plugin update notice is shown inside the [You should remove inactive plugins] item and appears as a [recommended improvement]. Only when there are no inactive plugins does [You have plugins waiting to be updated] appear separately as a [critical issue]. In my test, too, the 2 plugins waiting for updates and the 8 inactive plugins were shown together in this single item.
Run the updates under [Plugins › Installed Plugins], and delete plugins you don't use instead of merely deactivating them.
[You should remove inactive themes] appears when themes other than the active theme, its parent theme and one default WordPress theme are installed; delete the unused ones under [Appearance › Themes].
[A scheduled event is late] and [A scheduled event has failed] appear when WP-Cron could not run a task at its set time. Because WP-Cron runs only when a page request comes in, they show up often on sites with few visitors, and running [wp-cron.php] regularly from a server cron job fixes them.
When PHP modules are missing, required modules appear as [critical issues] and optional modules such as imagick as [recommended improvements].
4️⃣ The Info tab: copying server, PHP and database information
The [Info] tab is divided into 13 sections such as WordPress, Server, Database and WordPress Constants; expanding a section shows the values you need when asking for help, such as the PHP version and memory limit.
When contacting your hosting provider or a plugin developer, copy everything with the [Copy site info to clipboard] button and paste it in. Items such as the database username and site address are left out of the copy, but server paths and version information are included, so don't post it as is on public forums.
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