Following/tracing page construction through theme PHP

So, yes, WP can be quite a mess, more so in complicated themes. Some of it is just experience and chewing through sources.

There are, however, several things that can help to determine what is happening via code:

  • Dumping get_included_files() will get you all PHP files loaded up to that point. It’s messy, but sometimes it’s what it takes.
  • There are plugins like What The File that will give a little more now picture of template files involved.
  • You can dump wp_debug_backtrace_summary() to see execution stack to a specific point in code.
  • Sometimes hooks are more important than files, you can use helpers like R_Debug to dump live hooks execution and see what fires.

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