Managing Health Checks

Health Checker for Joomla allows you to enable or disable individual health checks through the plugin configuration interface. This gives you complete control over which checks run on your site.

Why Disable Checks?

You might want to disable certain checks if:

• They're not relevant to your site - For example, if you don't use the JSON extension, you can disable that check
• They generate false positives - Some checks might flag warnings for configurations that are intentional on your site
• Performance optimization - Disabling unused checks reduces execution time
• Reducing noise - Focus on the checks that matter most to your specific setup

How to Manage Checks

Accessing Plugin Configuration

1. Log into your Joomla administrator panel
2. Navigate to Extensions → Plugins
3. Search for "Health Checker - Core Checks"
4. Click on the plugin name to edit it

Understanding the Configuration Screen

The plugin configuration is organized into 8 category fieldsets, matching the Health Checker categories:

• Content Checks - Articles, categories, menus (11 checks)
• Database Checks - Connection, performance, integrity (17 checks)
• Extensions Checks - Joomla extensions and PHP extensions (21 checks)
• Performance Checks - Caching, compression, optimization (11 checks)
• Security Checks - SSL, permissions, authentication (22 checks)
• SEO Checks - Meta tags, URLs, sitemaps (11 checks)
• System & Hosting Checks - PHP, server, resources (34 checks)
• Users Checks - Accounts, permissions, activity (12 checks)

Disabling Individual Checks

Each category has a list of checkboxes showing all available checks in that category:

1. Expand the category you want to configure (e.g., "Extensions Checks")
2. Uncheck the boxes for checks you want to disable
   • For example, uncheck "JSON Extension" if you don't use it
3. Click Save & Close

The next time you run Health Checker, the disabled checks will not execute.

Disabling Entire Categories

To disable all checks in a category:

1. Expand the category fieldset
2. Uncheck all the checkboxes in that category
3. Click Save & Close

Note: You cannot disable categories through the component itself - you must disable individual checks through the plugin configuration.

Default Behavior

All checks are enabled by default when you first install Health Checker. You must explicitly disable checks you don't want to run.

If you haven't configured any checks:

• All 129 core checks will run
• This is the recommended starting point for most sites
• You can disable checks as needed after reviewing initial results

Examples

Example 1: Disabling PHP Extension Checks

If your server doesn't have certain PHP extensions and you're okay with that:

1. Go to plugin configuration
2. Expand "Extensions Checks"
3. Uncheck:
   • JSON Extension
   • Imagick Extension
   • EXIF Extension
   • (or any others you don't need)
4. Save

Example 2: Disabling Content Checks

If you're running a simple site with minimal content management:

1. Go to plugin configuration
2. Expand "Content Checks"
3. Uncheck checks like:
   • Orphaned Articles
   • Empty Articles
   • Draft Articles
4. Save

Example 3: Focusing Only on Security

If you only care about security monitoring:

1. Keep all "Security Checks" enabled
2. Disable checks in other categories as needed
3. This reduces execution time and focuses reports on security issues only

Controlling Export Visibility

Beyond enabling or disabling a check entirely, you can control whether each check appears in exported reports. This lets a check continue running and showing results in the admin UI while keeping it out of the reports you share with clients or hosting providers.

How to Configure It

Each check in the plugin configuration has an Export Visibility dropdown alongside the enable/disable toggle:

1. Go to Extensions → Plugins and open the plugin
2. Find the check you want to configure
3. Set the Export Visibility dropdown:
   • Always Export — included in every export (default for all checks)
   • Issues Only — only included when the result is Warning or Critical
   • Never Export — excluded from all exports
4. Click Save & Close

The check continues to run and its result is visible in the Health Checker dashboard. Only the export output is affected.

Example: Preparing a Client Report

You manage a site for a client and want to send them an HTML report covering only application-level issues. Server configuration checks (PHP memory limits, MySQL settings) are things you handle on their behalf — there's no reason to include them in a client-facing report.

1. Open the Core Checks plugin configuration
2. In the System & Hosting Checks section, set the export visibility for server-level checks to Never Export
3. Export the HTML report — it will contain only the checks relevant to the client

Notes

• Export visibility has no effect on the admin dashboard — all enabled checks always appear there
• The summary totals in an exported report (critical/warning/good counts) reflect only the checks that are included in that export
• "Issues Only" is a good default for informational checks that rarely fail — the exported report stays focused on problems without losing those checks when they do trigger

Impact on Performance

Disabled checks are completely skipped during execution:

• They don't run any code
• They don't query the database
• They don't appear in results
• The total check count decreases

This improves performance, especially if you disable many checks.

Example: If you disable 20 checks out of 129, the health check will execute faster because those 20 checks are never instantiated or executed.

Dashboard Module

The Dashboard Module automatically respects disabled checks:

• Only enabled checks appear in the widget
• Counts and status badges reflect only active checks
• Cache is based on enabled checks only

Re-Enabling Checks

To re-enable a previously disabled check:

1. Return to the plugin configuration
2. Expand the relevant category
3. Check the box next to the check you want to enable
4. Click Save & Close

The check will appear in results on the next health check run.

Troubleshooting

Check titles showing as language keys

If you see PLG_HEALTHCHECKER_CORE_CHECK_... instead of check names:

• This is a language file issue, not a configuration issue
• Reinstall the plugin to restore language files
• Or manually add missing language keys to plg_healthchecker_core.ini

All checks disabled accidentally

If you've disabled too many checks and want to reset:

1. Go to plugin configuration
2. Expand each category
3. Check all boxes to re-enable everything
4. Or uninstall and reinstall the plugin to reset to defaults

Changes not taking effect

If disabling checks doesn't work:

1. Verify you clicked Save & Close
2. Clear Joomla cache (System → Clear Cache)
3. Run health check again
4. Check that the plugin is enabled (not just configured)

Advanced: Plugin Parameters in Database

Disabled checks are stored as JSON arrays in the plugin parameters. For example:

{
  "enabled_system": ["system.php_version", "system.disk_space", ...],
  "enabled_database": ["database.connection", ...],
  ...
}

If a category parameter is empty or not set, all checks in that category are enabled by default.

Best Practices

✅ DO:

• Start with all checks enabled to get a baseline
• Disable checks after understanding what they do
• Disable checks that genuinely don't apply to your site
• Document which checks you've disabled and why

❌ DON'T:

• Disable security checks just because they show warnings
• Disable checks without understanding them first
• Disable too many checks - you might miss important issues

Related Documentation

• Understanding Results - Learn what each check means
• Check Reference - Complete list of all checks
• Getting Started - Initial setup guide
• Dashboard Module - Widget configuration