Every now and then someone finds something wrong with a WordPress install which, rather than be caused by a bug in WordPress itself, is caused by a server configuration error, an interaction between WordPress and something else installed on the server or is just a recommend optimisation for better site performance.

Everyone has a different set of pitfalls that they have come across and I would like to collect together all these little things into a comprehensive community developed plugin which can hopefully become one of the first “canonical” plugins that we have talked about.

To that end I have developed a framework for this plugin, in the style of a unit test framework, to make it really easy to write tests and I am hoping that some of you will have ideas for tests and also that you will want to get involved.

For a while I have tagged tickets in the main WordPress trac where there are is possible inspiration for tests – http://bit.ly/healthchecktickets.

The following is an example of the code required to carry out one of these tests which recommends users of PHP4 upgrade to PHP5.

/**
 * Check that we are running at least PHP 5
 *
 * @todo Provide a link to a codex article
 * @link http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/9751
 * @author peterwestwood
 */
class HealthCheck_PHP_Version extends HealthCheckTest {
    function run_test() {
        $this->assertTrue(    version_compare('5.0.0', PHP_VERSION, '<'),
        sprintf( __( 'Your Webserver is running PHP version %s, which is no longer receiving security updates and will no longer be supported by a future version of WordPress.', 'health-check' ), PHP_VERSION ),
        HEALTH_CHECK_RECOMMENDATION );
    }
}
HealthCheck::register_test('HealthCheck_PHP_Version');

If you would like to get involved in the development of the plugin then you can check the source code out from the WordPress plugins subversion repository here: http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/health-check/branches/alpha/ and you can follow the development progress using the WordPress plugins trac here: http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/health-check/branches/alpha.

As the plugin is not yet ready for its first release we will be doing the development in this alpha branch and then move to trunk once we make the first release.

I am actively looking for fellow developers for this project as a community team we can make this a success.

So if you would like commit access to write some tests then drop me a note using the contact form with a bit about yourself and I will give you access.