Query recording and shareable URLs

Query recording is a time-limited capture of all database queries during a specific action. You start a recording, perform the action you want to analyze (load a page, complete a checkout, run a cron job), and the recording captures every query that runs during that window. Shareable URLs let someone else trigger a recording without WordPress admin access.

Starting a recording

Recordings are started from the WordPress admin dashboard.

1. Go to Debug Toolkit > Overview.
2. Find the Database Monitor card.
3. Click Record.

The recording dialog opens with two settings:

Duration

How long the recording captures queries. Options:

• 10 seconds
• 30 seconds
• 1 minute
• 5 minutes
• Custom (1–3600 seconds)

Choose a duration that covers the action you want to capture. For a single page load, 10 seconds is enough. For a multi-step checkout flow, use 1–5 minutes.

Recording tag

A label for organizing recordings, like checkout-debug, homepage-load, or cron-investigation. Tags appear in the Query Viewer’s filter panel, so you can filter to see only the queries from a specific recording session.

Tags are optional but recommended. Without a tag, you have to identify recordings by timestamp alone.

Shareable URLs

A shareable URL lets anyone — a client, a team member, a support agent — start a query recording on your site without logging into WordPress.

Creating a shareable URL

1. In the recording dialog, enable Shareable URL.
2. Configure the options:

1. Click Start Recording (or Create URL if you are creating without starting immediately).
2. Copy the generated URL and share it.

How a shareable URL works

The URL follows this flow:

1. Visitor opens the URL. A pre-recording page shows a 3-2-1 countdown with the recording duration and tag.
2. Recording starts. The countdown completes and the recording begins. The page shows a status indicator with elapsed time.
3. Recording completes. The status page shows that the recording finished and how many queries were captured.
4. Download (optional). If you enabled “Allow download,” a download button appears. The guest can download the query log file for the recording.

Each shareable URL uses a unique token. The recording data is written to a token-specific log file, separate from the main query log. This keeps shareable recordings isolated.

Security

Shareable URLs do not grant WordPress admin access. The guest can only trigger and optionally download the specific recording associated with the token. They cannot view the main query log, access the admin dashboard, or modify settings.

The URL expires after the configured time or usage limit, whichever comes first.

Use cases

Reproducing a slow page. Send a client a shareable URL and ask them to visit the slow page while the recording is active. You get the exact query data from their session.

Recording a checkout flow. Set a 2-minute recording, walk through the checkout process, and capture every query from cart to confirmation. Useful for identifying plugins that add expensive queries during checkout.

Capturing intermittent slow queries. Set a longer recording (5 minutes or more) during a time when the issue tends to occur. The recording captures everything, and you can filter by performance category to find the slow ones.

Viewing recordings

In the Query Viewer:

1. Press F to open the filter panel.
2. Under Recording tag, select the tag you used when starting the recording.

The query table and statistics dashboard update to show only queries from that recording session.

If you did not assign a tag, recordings still appear in the log. You can filter by time range to isolate them.