Setup Helper lets you test your consent banner, tracking tools and other modules of WP Full Picture, without logging out and using incognito mode in your browser.
To understand how it works, you need to know:
What happens when you click the “Setup helper” button
When you click the setup helper button, WP FP will:
- add (little) information to the debug.log file on your server (mostly informing about internal errors)
- add information in the browser console. Most of this information is about the events tracked by WP FP and what the consent banner does in the background.
The information does not pose any security risks. It is generated by the browser and only concerns the current user.
Information in the browser console is available during testing (see below) and to users who agreed to cookies and are NOT logged-in as administrators.
How is it useful?
Information from the browser console is very useful if you want to let other developers (or our support agents) find the causes of issues with your tracking setup. This way, you do not have to give anyone access to your WP.
Information in the server’s debug log is useful, when you want to test operations that WP FP does on the server. These can be, e.g. generating files, clearing cache of other plugins or tracking purchases via server tracking.
What happens when you click the “Start testing” button on the front end
To find the “Start testing” button, visit the front-end of your website and click the WP Full Picture’s icon on the side of the screen.
When you click it, a few things will happen:
- You will start being tracked like all visitors
- You will see extra information in your browser console (see the previous section)
- You will see your consent banner (if you have it enabled). We cleared your cookie choices so that you can test how it behaves for new visitors.
- In the browser console, you will be able to view metadata information about the post, user and taxonomy term that are available on the page you are on. This is useful when setting up tracking metadata. To view the metadata, simply enter variables
fp_usermeta,fp_postmetaorfp_termmetain the console. - You will also be able to clear cookie choices at any time using buttons in the testing panel.
How is it useful?
When you start testing via the “test panel”:
- You will not have to log out to test anything
- You will be able to easily test your consent banner
- You will be able to learn the metadata keys, which are necessary to set up tracking metadata
We strongly recommend you enable the option “Preserve log” in the settings of the browser console. This way, the information in the console will not be removed when you switch pages.
View the video
This video talks about setup mode, which was later renamed to Setup Helper and slightly improved. However, the information in the video is still true to date.