What an outside reviewer sees in the first ten minutes.
The boring fix
Logs are the cheapest witness you have. Before anyone proposes a theory, we turn on debug logging on a copy of the site, repeat the problem once and read what it left behind. Half the time the answer is sitting there in plain words, and the other half we at least know which theories to stop discussing.
Permissions tend to drift. A role that made sense at launch picks up one extra capability each year until nobody can say who is allowed to do what. We list the roles, list the people and compare them with what the job actually needs. It is a dull hour, and it has found more real problems than most scanners.

Maya Okafor Apr 28, 2024
Nice. One small correction: that hook fires earlier than the post suggests.
Noah Bennett Apr 09, 2025
Does this still hold on a site with a persistent object cache, or does the picture change?
Grace Tanaka Aug 21, 2024
This saved me an afternoon. The bit about testing the cold path first is going on the team wiki.
Grace Tanaka Dec 15, 2024
We hit the same thing last spring and blamed the host for a month. Wish I had read this then.
Omar Haddad Aug 02, 2025
Good write-up. I would add a note about checking the logs before you clear anything.
Maya Okafor Nov 26, 2025
Tried this on a client site this morning. The query count dropped straight away.
Omar Haddad Mar 21, 2026
I disagree slightly on the rollback plan, but the rest matches what we do.
Ravi Menon Jul 14, 2026
Thanks for showing the failed attempts as well. That is the useful part.