WP Engine’s Content Performance is a WordPress plugin available which helps marketers and publishers enhance their content strategy by taking data from Google Analytics and optimizing it for WordPress in your site’s WordPress Admin Dashboard. For more information, please see About Content Performance. There are some known incompatibilities, as well as some potential errors. This article helps explain these scenarios, as well as the steps to take if you encounter them.
Known Conflicts and Incompatibilities
There are a few known conflicts and incompatible configurations with the Content Performance plugin, which include:
- Sites which are not publicly accessible: In order for Content Performance to work properly, your site needs to be publicly accessible – this means it cannot be behind Password Protection, Basic Auth, OAuth, or other sign-in pages blocking the full site.
- Multisites: Multisites are not currently supported by Content Performance, and will likely run into conflicts when trying to connect Google Analytics. We hope to add support for Multisite in the future.
- Custom WP REST API prefix: The current version of Content Performance does not support using a custom prefix with the WP REST API.
- Non-Standard Google Analytics Configurations: Certain custom configurations in Google Analytics may cause errors when validating URLs against your current site. We recommend using the default configuration specifically with URL paths in Google Analytics to ensure Content Performance works properly.
Issues in the Installation Process
In the installation process you may run into a few areas of confusion. In this section we’ll explain some common issues you may experience, and the suggested steps to help.
- The “Configure Content Performance” button doesn’t take me to my dashboard: If when clicking “Configure Content Performance” you are not taken to the plugin installation page or the plugin settings page in your WordPress Admin Dashboard, no worries. Just sign into your WordPress Admin Dashboard and go to Plugins > Installed Plugins. Here you should see Content Performance in the list. Just ensure the plugin is active, then head to Content Performance tab > Settings to configure it.
- The Content Performance option doesn’t show on the Utilities page: If you don’t see the option for Content Performance on your Utilities page and you have added the Content Performance add-on to your plan, this most likely indicates your site is a Multisite, which is not currently supported. If your site is a Multisite, Content Performance will not be an option on the Utilities page.
- I installed and activated the plugin in User Portal, but in my WordPress Admin Dashboard it’s not installed: If you have followed the steps in the User Portal but the plugin still isn’t installed in your WordPress Admin Dashboard, please reach out to our Support team via 24/7 chat in your User Portal for help with the install process.
Issues in the Configuration Process
When configuring the plugin there are a few messages you may see along the way. This section explains what each message means, and the best resolution if applicable. For detailed steps showing how to install and set up the Content Performance plugin, please see Configuring Content Performance.
- Content Performance is validating your Google Analytics configuration. Please check in a couple of minutes to confirm that validation has successfully completed. This means the plugin is validating access to your Google Analytics account. Usually this step takes no more than a minute or two.
- Your Google Analytics account is connected, and your data is currently being populated. Please check back in a few hours to see your performance data. This means the Content Performance plugin is now pulling a year’s worth of data from Google Analytics for your site. This may take a few hours, or potentially longer if your site has a very large number of pages. If it has taken more than 24 hours please contact Support via 24/7 chat in your User Portal.
- The Google Analytics data does not match your WordPress data. Please verify your Google settings and try again. This means that the plugin pulled a number of URI paths from Google Analytics and validated them by checking if they actually exist on the site. If you have selected a profile with multiple sites, please choose one which only contains your site specifically to ensure the validation completes. If you are certain you have selected the correct profile, please contact Support via 24/7 chat in your User Portal for more help.
- We were unable to reach our plugin, Content Performance might not work correctly. This means our plugin was unable to reach its WP REST API endpoints. If you have disabled the WP REST API, this will need to be re-enabled in order for Content Performance to work properly.
- Content Performance key pair is required before any other settings can be configured. This means the Access key and Secret key pair are missing. If this is the case, you will see a prompt on the Settings page to enter the keys, which can be found in your User Portal under Utilities.
Errors on the Dashboard Page
While most Content Performance errors would display on the Settings page, there are a couple errors which you might see on the Content Performance Dashboard page. Below we’ll explain the most common errors and resolutions.
- We were unable to fetch your data, WordPress encountered a fatal error. This error means the plugin request for data on the site returned a fatal error. You can check your Error Logs in the User Portal for a better idea of what might be causing this error.
- We were unable to fetch your data, there was unexpected output in the response. This means the data we retrieved wasn’t able to be properly read. The most common cause of this is having WP_DEBUG enabled in your wp-config.php file. Please turn off WP_DEBUG to allow Content Performance to work properly. If you do not have WP_DEBUG enabled and still receive this error, please contact Support via 24/7 chat in your User Portal.