Section 6: "If at first you do not succeed..."
(troubleshooting and debugging)
Q: Why won't this macro / addon work? I'm almost positive my code is correct! (credit to Gharr)
A: For macros: double- and even triple-check your syntax AND SPELLING. Remember that LUA is case-sensitive! Triple-check the names of any spells, as well. CastSpellByName("Curse of Shadows(Rank 2)") is NOT the same as CastSpellByName("Curse of Shadow(Rank 2)")
For AddOns: Follow the advice given in the "For macros:" section above. Remember that both LUA *and* XML are case-sensitive! </OnLoad> is NOT the same as </onload>. If your AddOn is listed in the [AddOns] list at character select, but doesn't seem to be loading in-game, check your XML, you likely have an error there somewhere.
If you've tried the above and STILL can't get your script to work: Make a NEW post in this forum asking for help. Please DO NOT clutter up this thread asking for help with your broken macros!
Q: I'm having <insert vague problem here> with my UI, help! (credit to Itchyban)
A: Go to the character select screen. In the bottom left is a button labeled [AddOns]. Click that. You should see a list of all the AddOns that WoW thinks it might be able to load. You can enable and disable their loading from there.
Make a list of all that you have loaded.
Disable them all. Yep. All of them.
Enter the game and see if the problem still exists. If it does, you probably have an "old style" AddOn that put something in the path/to/WoW/Interface/FrameXML/ folder. Rename that folder to something like FrameXML.broken and try it again. If you still have a problem change the name of the path/to/WoW/Interface/AddOns/ folder to something like AddOns.broken and try again. If you still have a problem, something about your WoW installation is really broken and you may have to do the dreaded "WTF, WDB, Interface" dance. (i.e., follow the steps for completely resetting your UI in the Q/A below.)
Assuming that it ran fine with at most moving your FrameXML folder aside, you now need to start re-enabling AddOns until you see the problem. If you don't want to do a lot of paperwork, and have a little time, re-enable them one at a time and see what happens. (This is the way I do it. It doesn't take too long even with a moderately-long list of AddOns.)
If you have a ton of AddOns, you may want to do a "binary search" which works like this:
1) Split your list of "possibly broken" AddOns in half, make note of the halves
2) Enable one half ("newly enabled") and see what happens.
3) Does it work?
- Broken: It is related to your "newly enabled" AddOns. Go to step 1 with your "possibly broken" AddOns replaced with the "newly enabled" addons and split those in half again (until you get down to one "candidate")
- Not Broken: It is not related to your "newly enabled" AddOns. Go to step 1 with your "possibly broken" AddOns replaced with the half that you didn't enable and split those in half again (until you get down to one "candidate")
Once you get down to one candidate, disable all AddOns except that one. If you still have the problem, that is your culprit. If you don't see the problem, then it is a likely conflict with some other AddOn(s) and you would need to use a similar search to find which pair (and hopefully not three or four involved) cause the problem.
Q: I really fudged up my interface! How can I reset everything to the defaults?
A: Delete the WDB and WTF folders from your World of Warcraft directory, and move the Interface folder to your desktop. Log back into the game and your UI, keybindings, and chat configurations should be reset to the default settings. Log out and move your Interface folder back into your WoW directory. Now you should be able to log back into the game and reconfigure all of your AddOns, etc.
NOTE: It is generally an excellent idea to maintain regular backups of the Interface folder (which contains the code for all your AddOns) and the WTF folder (which contains all your custom configurations and keybindings).