Make WordPress Core

Opened 4 years ago

Closed 4 years ago

#52392 closed task (blessed) (fixed)

Improve "critical error" language

Reported by: ipstenu's profile Ipstenu Owned by: sergeybiryukov's profile SergeyBiryukov
Milestone: 5.7 Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version:
Component: Site Health Keywords: has-patch commit
Focuses: Cc:

Description

There has been a notable uptick in people coming to WordPress.org when they get the message:

There has been a critical error on this website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.
Learn more about debugging in WordPress.

The link goes to https://wordpress.org/support/article/debugging-in-wordpress/

That actually has begun to encourage people to log in to WordPress.org, which would be fine _except_ they're trying to log in as the account they use on their self-hosted version of WordPress. Which fails.

While we're working on improving the messaging when a login fails, maybe we could also do a better job of making sure people know that you cannot log in to WordPress.org with the credentials from your own host.

I know we're trying to balance 'too much info!' on that page, but this is a pretty common point of confusion.

Just to give a metric here, the numbers went from 1-5 a week to 12-20 a day (yes, a day) asking why their account is banned (for people who use 'admin') or non-existent. This is clearly creeping up pretty fast. We've already updated the replies we use to explain, and that seems to be sufficient to help them once they're there, but it would be long-term better that they didn't have to wait on someone to reply.

See also: https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5590

Attachments (1)

52392.diff (804 bytes) - added by audrasjb 4 years ago.
Link change + replace "Debugging" with "Troubleshooting"

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (9)

#1 @Clorith
4 years ago

I wonder if it would be more helpful to users if the link goes to https://wordpress.org/support/article/faq-troubleshooting/ instead perhaps?

That page is more geared towards users than the current one (which is more developer oriented I feel), although it's a bit of a large page, I think we can refine that over time if we change what core references.

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #core by clorith. View the logs.


4 years ago

#3 @SergeyBiryukov
4 years ago

  • Milestone changed from Awaiting Review to 5.7
  • Type changed from enhancement to task (blessed)

@audrasjb
4 years ago

Link change + replace "Debugging" with "Troubleshooting"

#4 @audrasjb
4 years ago

52392.diff does the following:

  • replace /support/article/debugging-in-wordpress/ link with /support/article/faq-troubleshooting/
  • replace "debugging WP" with "troubleshooting WP" as per Sergey’s suggestion on slack

https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBWTW/p1612872581185500?thread_ts=1612872167.182700&cid=C02RQBWTW

#5 @hellofromTonya
4 years ago

  • Keywords has-patch added

#6 @Clorith
4 years ago

I like it, nice and simple, and will definitely be a benefit to end users I believe, +1 on 52392.diff from me

#7 @hellofromTonya
4 years ago

  • Keywords commit added

With Marius' approval above, marking this one for commit.

#8 @SergeyBiryukov
4 years ago

  • Owner set to SergeyBiryukov
  • Resolution set to fixed
  • Status changed from new to closed

In 50272:

Site Health: Link to the support article on troubleshooting in "There has been a critical error" message.

This page is more geared towards users than the one on debugging, which is more developer-oriented.

Props audrasjb, Clorith, Ipstenu.
Fixes #52392.

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