The holidays are quickly approaching, but our teams are still busy at work. We have a lot of new features and updates coming out before the end of the year that you’re not going to want to miss.
Today we are excited to release our new WP_DEBUG tool. This tool lets you easily see warnings, errors, and notices on your WordPress site. It’s already available in the MyKinsta dashboard. 🙌
We also have a few other updates and improvements to our MyKinsta dashboard which we’ll dive into below. Many come directly from your own requests! So thank you, and keep the feedback coming. We mean it. We want to know your struggles and pain points so that we can help fix them.
New WP_DEBUG Tool
Many of you do a lot of troubleshooting and debugging in your daily workflows, especially those of you working with clients or writing custom code.
Typically whenever you’re trying to investigate an error or warning in WordPress, one of the first things thing to do is to enable WP_DEBUG. This is a PHP constant (a permanent global variable) that can be used to trigger the debug mode throughout your site.
Whether it’s an out of date plugin or PHP function causing problems, you simply need more data to determine what’s going on. This usually requires connecting to your site via SFTP, and dropping a line of code into your wp-config.php file. However, this isn’t very convenient. Many of you just need to see the warning or error and where it’s happening to quickly fix it.
Our new WP_DEBUG tool makes that a little easier!
How to Enable the WP_DEBUG Tool
Log in to MyKinsta and click into “Tools” under your WordPress site. You will now see a new tool called “WordPress debugging.” Simply click “Enable.”
And that’s it! Behind the scenes, our platform is setting the WP_DEBUG constant to true in your wp-config.php file. You will then be able to see warnings, errors, and notices on your WordPress site (both on the frontend and the WordPress admin dashboard).
An example would be like the one below. It’s a notice complaining about an undefined property. With WP_DEBUG turned off you would never see this message.
Don’t forget to turn off debugging when you’re all done!
Redesigned Search and Replace Tool
We’ve redesigned our Search and Replace tool in MyKinsta so that it’s easier to use. This has become a very popular tool and many are doing replacements on a regular basis. The whole idea is that you no longer have to bother installing a plugin or going to phpmyadmin to perform what in most cases should be a simple and quick task.
Previously the tool was found at the bottom of the tools page. We’ve now given the Search and Replace tool it’s own section as we’ll keep adding improvements to it as we move forward.
The UI for the tool has been redesigned and is much easier to use, especially for those that aren’t used to regularly doing these types of operations. Our platform will automatically take a backup before doing the replacement in your database and you can have it automatically clear your site cache.
CDN Indicator on Sites List
While it’s a minor change, it’s one that we got a lot of feedback about. We’ve added a new CDN indicator on the Sites list page. You can now easily see if you have the Kinsta CDN enabled on a site without having to dig down into the CDN page.
Join the Kinsta Research Program (Now Open to Everyone)
It would be awesome if we could ask a few questions or show you some new features before they go live so that we can hear your first impressions and collect feedback. This way, you can have a real impact on how certain features might look or work in MyKinsta.
Previously, we sent these invites out on a case-by-case basis, but we’re now opening it up to everyone!
Want to join Kinsta’s Research Program?
If you are a Kinsta customer, you can enable or disable research invitations from your User Settings in MyKinsta. To find the toggle for this setting, click on your user icon in the upper-right corner of MyKinsta, then click User Settings.
On the User Settings page, click on Notifications in the left side menu and scroll down. Enable the toggle in the Research invitations section to be contacted about upcoming research opportunities. If you decide you no longer want to receive invitations in the future, disable the same toggle.
Updated Backup Restoration Workflow
Backups are very important to us at Kinsta. In fact, we offer 6 different types of backups. This includes automatic backups, manual backups, system-generated backups, downloadable backups, hourly backups, and more.
We’ve updated and improved our backup restoration workflow screens to include additional information. This way you’ll know exactly what is going to happen before restoring a backup to live or staging.
Miscellaneous Improvements and Changes
Below are a few additional improvements and changes we’ve made over the past couple of weeks.
Kinsta DNS and “@”
If you’re using Kinsta DNS, you’ll be happy to know we’ve made a small change in how we treat the “@” symbol in regards to our DNS records. Typically most providers associate the “@” with the domain itself, so we have followed suit.
You can now leave the “@” symbol as the value, which will designate the domain. In the example below, leaving “@” would simply mean asdf.com is pointing to 123.23.123.1.
Reorganizing SFTP/SSH and Database Access
Previously there were three sections under the Info page regarding your connections:
- SFTP/SSH
- SSH Connections
- Database Access
We discovered that this was more confusing than it was helpful since the credentials for SFTP/SSH are the same. Therefore, we’ve combined these down into two simple sections.
- SFTP/SSH
- Database access
Name Changes
- “IPv4 Address” is now referred to as “Site IP address.” This is simply easier for everyone to understand.
- What was previously “Billing” on the left-hand side navigation is now “Company.” Everything underneath this navigation item remains unchanged.
We hope all of these changes will help improve your daily workflow using MyKinsta. As always, please let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback. Stay tuned for the next feature update. 🤟