WordPress 5.3 Improvements to Site Health

• Change to Site Health Grading
• Recovery Email
• Site Health Status Filters

It’s barely been a month since WordPress 5.2.3 was released and another version is already brewing – version 5.3.  Detractors will say, this makes the platform a little too volatile, while supporters will say that it proves that the software is continually improving. 

The main change in the upcoming version is the change to the Site Health is based on a ticket #47046– mainly the percentage score.  The main issue was the Site Health tool providing a numerical grade. This issue and a few others has lead to changes in the tool to improve its usefulness and extended functionality for development purposes.

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Change to Site Health Status Grading

The percentage indicates the status of the site.  However, as the ticket feedback states, the percentage is vague and can lead to misunderstandings about the state of the site.  Additionally, there was also no clear visible notification of when a site health scan was completed.

To make it clearer, the numerical grade will be removed and changed to Should be improved and Good. The current pulsing animation will remain but will include text to indicate that the Site Status check is in progress. The added text will be, “Results are still loading…”

Recovery Email

The recovery email will also be enhanced to include information that can help with debugging a detected problem. The debug information can also be changed to include WordPress Version, PHP version, Current theme and version, problem plugin name and version.

Completed Site Health Status Filter

Another upcoming feature is the filters for Site Health Checks. A completed Site Health test is exposed to the site_status_test_result filter (ticket #47864).  This filter is added in order to provide extended functionality.  For example, the filter may be used to trigger a more detailed description of the site health results after a test is completed.

For more information on what’s new in WordPress 5.3, please see the Blog entry from WordPress.org (linked below).

What’s new in Site Health for WordPress 5.3

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