The profiler page lives at Tools > Dobsie in your WordPress admin. It’s where the deep analysis happens: four tabs (Overview, Deep Scan, Server Health and Debug) covering database queries, server configuration, and everything in between.
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Overview Tab
The Overview tab gives you a bird’s-eye view of your site’s health without enabling any extra diagnostics. Everything here reads from existing data.
Key Metrics
Four summary cards at the top:
- Memory Usage: current PHP memory consumption vs your configured limit
- Active Plugins: how many plugins are loaded (more plugins = more potential queries)
- Total Queries: database queries for this admin page load
- Autoloaded Data: total size of data WordPress loads on every single page request
Database Cleanup Stats
Shows how much database bloat you have:
- Post revisions: old versions of posts and pages
- Transients: temporary cached data (some may be expired)
- Expired transients: cached data that’s past its expiry and should be cleaned up
These aren’t things Dobsie cleans up for you, but knowing the numbers helps you decide if a cleanup plugin would help.
Quick Page Test
Enter any URL on your site and Dobsie will time the request from the server’s perspective. Useful for comparing page load times across different pages without leaving the profiler.
Autoloaded Options Table
The top 15 largest autoloaded options in your database, sorted by size. WordPress loads all autoloaded options on every single page request, so oversized entries here slow down everything.
Common culprits:
- Abandoned plugin settings that weren’t cleaned up on deactivation
- Plugins that store large data blobs in options instead of custom tables
- Expired transients that haven’t been cleaned up
Rewrite Rules Analysis
Shows your URL rewrite rules grouped by which plugin registered them. Helps you understand how much URL routing overhead each plugin adds.
Recommendations
Actionable suggestions based on what Dobsie found. These are plain English, not technical jargon.
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Deep Scan Tab
Deep Scan enables SAVEQUERIES and records every database query with its full call stack. This is where you find out exactly which plugin is generating which queries and how long each one takes.
Note: Deep Scan adds overhead because it records call stacks. Use it for diagnosis, not as a permanent monitoring tool.
Query Breakdown by Plugin
A visual bar chart showing all database queries grouped by source (plugin, theme, or WordPress core). Each bar shows:
- Plugin name
- Number of queries
- Total time spent
The plugin with the longest bar is consuming the most database time.
Slow Queries
Any query taking longer than 10ms is listed here with:
- The SQL statement (truncated for readability)
- Execution time
- Which plugin/file triggered it
These are your prime optimisation targets. A single 200ms query is worse than 100 queries taking 1ms each.
Worst Offenders
A summary of the plugins causing the most database load, with specific suggestions for each. Dobsie looks at query patterns (not just counts) to identify issues like:
- Plugins running duplicate queries
- Queries that could be cached but aren’t
- Queries scanning large tables without indexes
Slow Query Patterns
Shows which database tables are hit most by slow queries. If wp_postmeta keeps appearing, that’s a sign of plugins doing unindexed meta queries, a very common WordPress performance issue.
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Server Health Tab
Server Health checks your server configuration, filesystem, and WordPress internals for common problems.
Filesystem Health
- Cache directories: do they exist and are they writable?
- Uploads directory: permissions and available disk space
- Log files: are there oversized log files eating disk space?
- Problem files: error logs or debug files sitting in your web root (security risk)
Cron Health
WordPress cron handles scheduled tasks (sending emails, checking for updates, running cleanup jobs). This section shows:
- Total scheduled events
- Overdue events (cron jobs that should have run but haven’t)
- Specific overdue jobs with how late they are
If you see many overdue events, your WordPress cron might not be firing reliably. This is common on low-traffic sites or sites with aggressive caching.
PHP Configuration
Key PHP settings that affect performance:
- Memory limit: how much memory PHP can use
- Max execution time: how long a script can run before being killed
- OPcache status: whether PHP’s bytecode cache is enabled (it should be)
- PHP version: newer versions are significantly faster
Object Cache
Whether you have an object cache (Redis, Memcached) installed. An object cache can dramatically reduce database queries by caching query results in memory.
- None detected: every page load hits the database for everything
- Redis/Memcached detected: frequently-used data is served from memory
Active Hooks Analysis
Shows the WordPress hooks with the most callbacks attached. Hooks with dozens of callbacks can indicate plugins doing too much work on every page load.
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Tips for Using the Profiler
- Start with Overview. It’s free (no extra overhead) and often reveals the biggest issues
- Use Deep Scan for specific diagnosis when Overview shows high query counts but you need to know which plugin is responsible
- Check Server Health periodically. Cron issues and oversized log files creep up over time
- Compare before and after. Run a Quick Page Test, make a change (disable a plugin, clear a cache), then test again
- Don’t panic about query counts. 50 queries in 100ms is fine. 10 queries in 2 seconds is a problem. Time matters more than count.