Begin with the symptom and the smallest safe observation. Record the exact Free, Pro and Aurelia versions, active theme, WordPress and PHP versions, Core database schema, enabled payment and language providers, and whether a persistent object cache or external cron is present. Note the request URL, locale, viewport, timezone and UTC timestamp, but remove query tokens and guest identifiers.
Use WordPress Site Health, the Hotel Booking status screen and the relevant health panel. For iCal, capture source label, status, last success, next due time and bounded error class; never copy a full source URL. For payment, capture booking code, transaction state and amount/currency match without card data or webhook signatures. For a theme issue, record the template surface and cache layers before clearing anything.
Classify before changing
- A
product defectis a deterministic failure that remains with supported configuration. - Configuration fault: currency decimals, permalink, capability, gateway or provider settings contradict the contract.
- Environment fault: PHP extension, cron, TLS, cache, filesystem or upstream service is unavailable.
- Missing evidence: the report cannot yet be reproduced safely. Treat
missing evidenceas a temporary state, not as proof that data is absent.
Back up before data-changing recovery. Share only a redacted timeline, versions, steps, expected versus actual result and synthetic identifiers. Do not expose credentials, signed URLs, iCal tokens, personal data or raw exception traces.