PHP and WordPress: Debugging

Question

I am writing some plugins and themes for WordPress, and I finding it to debug because somehow by the time the page has loaded, $_GET, $_POST and $_REQUEST are all empty. Even with error reporting set on, I am not getting error messages either other than a blank page whenever there is a fatal error. Is there anyway to enable a 'debug mode' for WordPress?

Thanks!

Answer 1

There's (more than one/) a way to enable "a 'debug mode'" for php in general. And that's installing a debugger extension like e.g. xdebug.
You need a client that connects to the debugger and retrieves+displays the information.
Netbeans 6.7 has been released and its php module supports xdebug. It has become a nice IDE for PHP development.

Answer 2

Pear Debug Wordpress plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pear-debug/

Answer 3

I know this has long been answered, but if you define('WP_DEBUG',true); in your wp-config.php and are still not seeing errors, then add this code right after the define statement:

if (WP_DEBUG) ini_set('display_errors',1);