Culprit Finder

When something on your site breaks, the usual advice is “deactivate all plugins, then turn them back on one by one”. With 30 plugins that takes ages, and doing it on a live site breaks carts, logins and forms for real visitors.

Culprit Finder switches plugins off for your browser only. It asks one question per step: “Is the problem still there?” Answer Yes or No, and it narrows things down until it names the plugin that causes the problem, or the two plugins that conflict with each other. Visitors and other admins see the normal site the whole time.

• Visitors never notice. Only your browser sees plugins switched off. Nothing is deactivated, and your real plugin settings never change.
• Fast. About 7 answers for 30 plugins, because each answer halves the list.
• Catches two-plugin conflicts, such as two plugins that only crash together (“Cannot redeclare” fatal errors).
• Keep plugins on that the problem needs, for example your shop plugin for a checkout problem. Plugin dependencies (“Requires Plugins”) are respected.
• Answer from anywhere: the Culprit Finder page, the toolbar on any page, the dashboard widget, or a control panel that keeps working even when a step breaks your pages.
• Always a way out: an Exit button, a logged-out emergency exit link, and an automatic end after an hour without answers.
• A support report for forums and plugin authors, with no site address, user names or emails. Copy it, or download it as .md or .txt.
• Results history: your last 10 results stay on the Results tab, on your own site.

What it can’t test

Your theme, must-use plugins, drop-ins (such as object-cache.php) and server settings. If the problem stays with every plugin off, the result says so. Multisite networks aren’t supported yet.

Privacy

Culprit Finder makes no external requests and has no tracking. It stores its results only on your site, and uninstalling removes them.

Source code and support

Culprit Finder is free software (GPLv2 or later). The source code is on GitHub: https://github.com/Alhiane/culprit-finder-plugin. Documentation lives at https://getculpritfinder.com/docs.