WordPress Error Logger

A robust error handling and reporting solution for WordPress sites that provides detailed error reports and user-friendly error pages.

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Table of Contents

• Overview
• Features
• Installation
• Configuration
• Customization
• File Exclusion Feature
• Error Report Example
• Troubleshooting
• Credits

Overview

WordPress Error Logger provides two drop-in files that enhance WordPress's default error handling capabilities:

1. db-error.php - Handles database connection errors
2. php-error.php - Handles PHP fatal errors

When a database or PHP error occurs, these scripts:

• Display a user-friendly, multilingual maintenance page to visitors
• Send detailed error reports to site administrators
• Log errors for future reference
• Support external monitoring service integration

Features

For Site Visitors

• Professional, branded maintenance page
• Automatic page refresh with countdown timer
• Multilingual support (English, Spanish, and more)
• Mobile-responsive design
• Consistent user experience across different error types

For Site Administrators

• Comprehensive error reports via email
• Detailed error context (file, line, error type, etc.)
• WordPress and server environment information
• Database connection details
• Code context for PHP errors (showing code around the error line)
• Suggested recovery steps tailored to the error type
• Rate-limited emails to prevent flooding
• Optional error logging to file
• File exclusion capability to ignore specific error sources
• External monitoring service integration

Installation

1. Download the db-error.php and php-error.php files
2. Edit the configuration section at the top of each file
3. Upload to your WordPress site:
   • db-error.php → Place in wp-content/ directory
   • php-error.php → Place in wp-content/ directory

Configuration

Both files have similar configuration options at the top:

// Email configuration
$to = "info@example.com"; // Configure me - recipient's email address
$from = "info@example.com"; // Configure me - sender's email address
$cc = ""; // Optional CC recipient
$bcc = ""; // Optional BCC recipient

// Rate limiting for emails
$rate_limit = true; // Set to false to disable rate limiting
$rate_limit_file = __DIR__ . '/db-error-rate.log'; // File to track last error email
$rate_limit_interval = 300; // Minimum seconds between error emails (5 minutes)

// Logging configuration
$log_to_file = false; // Set to false to disable file logging
$log_file = __DIR__ . '/db-error.log'; // Path to log file

// Branding configuration
$site_logo = ''; // URL to your site logo (optional)
$site_name = isset($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']) ? htmlspecialchars($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'], ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8') : 'WordPress Site'; // Site name
$site_color = '#0073aa'; // Primary color for branding

// File exclusion configuration
$enable_file_exclusions = true; // Set to false to disable file exclusion checking
$excluded_files = [
    // Add file paths that should be excluded from error reporting
    // Examples:
    // '/home/example/public_html/wp-config-sample.php',
    // '/home/example/public_html/wp-content/debug.log',
    // You can use partial paths too - any file containing this string will be excluded
    'wp-config-sample.php'
];

// External monitoring integration
$ping_external_monitoring = false; // Set to true to enable
$monitoring_url = ''; // URL to ping (e.g., https://hc-ping.com/your-uuid)

Required Configuration

At minimum, you should configure:

• $to - Email address to receive error reports
• $from - Sender email address (must be configured on your server)

Optional Configuration

• Rate Limiting: Controls how frequently error emails are sent
• File Logging: Enables logging errors to a file
• File Exclusion: Prevents error reports for specific files
• Branding: Customize the appearance with your logo and colors
• External Monitoring: Integrate with services like Uptime Robot, Pingdom, etc.

Error Report Example

Error reports include:

• Error type, file, line number, and message
• WordPress version and PHP version
• Server environment details
• Request information (GET/POST data, sanitized)
• Database queries and connection details
• PHP configuration and loaded extensions
• Suggested recovery steps

File Exclusion Feature

The file exclusion feature allows you to prevent error reports from being sent when errors are triggered by specific files. This is useful for:

• Ignoring errors from development or sample files
• Preventing notification spam from known problematic files
• Focusing only on errors that matter to your site
• Filtering out errors from third-party plugins or themes you can't modify

How to Configure File Exclusions

In the configuration section of both db-error.php and php-error.php, you'll find:

// File exclusion configuration
$enable_file_exclusions = true; // Set to false to disable file exclusion checking
$excluded_files = [
    // Add file paths that should be excluded from error reporting
    // Examples:
    // '/home/example/public_html/wp-config-sample.php',
    // '/home/example/public_html/wp-content/debug.log',
    // You can use partial paths too - any file containing this string will be excluded
    'wp-config-sample.php'
];

Add paths to the $excluded_files array for any files you want to exclude from error reporting. You can use:

• Full absolute paths (most specific)
• Partial paths (will match any file containing that string)
• Just filenames (will match that filename anywhere in the path)

When an error occurs in a file that matches any entry in this list, no error report will be sent, but the user-friendly error page will still be displayed to visitors.

Logging Excluded Files

If you have file logging enabled ($log_to_file = true), the scripts will still log when an error from an excluded file is detected, helping you keep track of these errors without receiving email notifications for them.

Customization

Multilingual Support

The error pages support multiple languages with automatic browser language detection. To add additional languages, edit the $messages array in the configuration section.

Styling

The error page uses CSS variables for easy styling. Customize the appearance by modifying the :root variables in the CSS section.

Requirements

• WordPress 4.0+
• PHP 7.0+

License

GPL-2.0 License - See LICENSE file for details

Troubleshooting

No Emails Being Sent

If error emails are not being sent, check the following:

1. Verify that the $to and $from email addresses are correctly configured
2. Check if the error is coming from a file listed in the $excluded_files array
3. Make sure your server is properly configured to send emails
4. Check if rate limiting is preventing emails ($rate_limit_file exists and contains a recent timestamp)
5. Ensure the PHP mail() function is enabled on your server

Error Page Not Displaying

If the error page is not displaying properly:

1. Make sure the scripts are placed in the correct location (wp-content/ directory)
2. Check for any PHP syntax errors in the scripts
3. Verify that your server has read permissions for the files

Credits

Originally created by Lee Hodson, VR51, WP Service Masters. Enhanced with additional features and security improvements.

Copyright 2022-2025 Lee Hodson, VR51, WP Service Masters