Paul Bunyan for WordPress changelog

0.19.1

• New Get support screen: where to ask, and Copy support details, a plain-text block of versions, theme, active plugins and cache setup to paste into a ticket or forum post. It holds no keys, email addresses or visitor data.
• Give support access: a temporary administrator account for support that can only sign in through a link, never with a password. It deletes itself when the link expires (1 to 14 days), can be ended at any time, and every sign-in is recorded. See Get support, and give support access safely.

0.19.0

• New Go Professional screen: what the paid add-on adds, with this site’s own numbers from the last 7 days, and its prices. It disappears once Professional is installed.
• A one-line tip about Professional where it would help, one at a time, only on Paul Bunyan’s own screens and only for administrators. Each can be dismissed, and Settings turns them all off.
• After two weeks of use, Fix first asks once for a review on WordPress.org, with Maybe later and Don’t ask again.

0.18.1

• Very large queries, such as a big serialized option being saved, no longer slip past the query summary. When a query is too large to summarize, only its kind and table are kept, so no values from it are ever stored.

0.18.0

• Ask AI moves to Paul Bunyan Professional, with the new “Explain this” button and an AI summary in the email report. The free plugin keeps the AI report: copy it or download it and paste it into any AI assistant. Ask AI settings already saved, key included, carry over to Professional.
• New hooks for add-ons: paul_bunyan_report_top, paul_bunyan_request_tools and paul_bunyan_finding_tools.

0.17.0

• Ask AI works with the AI service you choose: Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI, Google (Gemini), or any service that accepts the OpenAI chat format, including a model on your own computer.
• Answers are shown formatted, with everything the service sends escaped first.
• Ask AI says exactly what is missing when it is not ready, and explains common errors.

0.16

• New look: a side menu grouped by task, a header with the switch, and every screen restyled. The Inter typeface is bundled; nothing is loaded from another server.
• Each request is tagged visitor, logged in or administrator (the kind of user only, never who), with filters on Messages and Overview.
• “Time before the site answered” separates the wait before PHP started from the time PHP spent (PB-2808).
• The Database screen names the plugin or theme behind each large autoloaded option, and flags those whose owner is not active.
• The Background screen shows Action Scheduler work by plugin: waiting, late, failed and done.
• Save one request as a single HTML file to send to a plugin’s support desk.
• Read-only abilities for AI assistants on WordPress 6.9 and later.
• The safety switch now counts a request against Paul Bunyan only when its own cost is over the limit and also at least a tenth of the request, so a server that is overloaded for everyone does not trip it.

0.15.0

• Paul Bunyan is now two plugins: the free edition, with all recording and every diagnostic screen, and the separate Professional add-on.
• History: 3 days of full detail and 7 days of summary.

0.14.0

• Two sites: compare a live site with staging.
• Scheduled page checks (PB-2901, PB-2902) and reports by email.
• A new install profiles the home page on first look, so the first screen is not empty.

0.13

• String pool: file names, function names, call paths and query shapes are stored once and referenced, as the original Paul Bunyan did with file names.
• Core Web Vitals per page from real visitors (PB-2805, PB-2806, PB-2807).
• “Got slower” detection (PB-2108) and requests running at the same time.
• Browser reports from a cached copy of a page are marked as such.

0.12

• Your data: what is stored, download messages as CSV or JSON, carry a setup to another site, delete messages or reset everything.
• Read-only access for chosen roles.
• Option to keep only the table and caller of slow queries, not the query text.

0.11

• Profile one page on demand as a logged-out visitor, with every hook watched, even while recording is off.
• Compare two requests side by side.
• Memory per plugin on the Plugins screen.
• When another profiler is running, its wrapper is no longer named as the caller.

0.10.0

• The switch: on, off, on for a set time, or on for one browser only.
• define( 'PAUL_BUNYAN_OFF', true ); in wp-config.php switches it off with no login.
• The safety switch (PB-1008).
• WP-CLI: wp pb status, on, off, fix, report and log.

0.9.0

• Plugins screen: what each plugin and the theme cost per request, split by kind of request.

0.8

• Fix first: one ranked list of what costs the most, with what it means and what to do.
• Database: query shapes ranked by total time, and slow queries explained in words (PB-2504).
• Site setup checks, PB-3001 to PB-3009.

0.7

• Processor (CPU) time and memory per request (PB-2104, PB-2105).

0.6

• PB codes: every notice and finding has a number with a fixed meaning and a note on what to do.
• Paul Bunyan reports when its own log is incomplete.
• pb_context() ties messages from many requests into one trail, and pb_bug() records things that should never happen.

0.2 to 0.5

• Request timeline, markers and comparison, browser timing, the Overview, background jobs and business events.
• Hook watching reworked: overhead cut from about 190 ms to about 13 ms per page on the test store.