January 12, 2024

Fatal Error Notify Plugin

Receive email notifications when errors occur on your WordPress site.

This plugin sends you an email notification whenever a fatal error (or other error level, configurably) is detected on your site.

Unlike traditional uptime monitoring services, which will only notify you if your entire site is down, this plugin can notify you when an error is detected on any page or process on your site.

Automatic plugin and theme updates often introduce problems that you aren’t aware of until they’re reported by your visitors. Fatal Error Notify lets you address these issues as they occur and before they cause significant problems.

Installation

Install it just like any other WordPress plugin:

Either: Upload the plugin files to the /wp-content/plugins/fatal-error-notify directory.
Or: Install the plugin through the WordPress plugins screen directly.

Then:
1. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ screen in WordPress
2. Use the Settings->Fatal Error Notify screen to configure notification settings

Screenshots

Admin configuration settings
Example email received when an error has been reported

FAQ

How does the plugin send error notifications if my site is down?

Fatal Error Notify hooks into PHP’s “shutdown” function to send notifications right before the page stops loading. Even the dreaded “500 – Internal Server Error” still triggers PHP’s shutdown actions. Even if your site is completely offline, in most cases this plugin will be able to detect the error and notify you.

What’s in the Pro version

Fatal Error Notify Pro includes several additional features, like Slack notifications, the ability to hide the plugin settings, multisite support, logging of recorded errors, out of memory handling, the ability to pause individual notifications, and more.

Fatal Error Notify Pro also includes integrations with Gravity Forms, WooCommerce, WPForms, WP Fusion, and WP Mail SMTP and can send notifications when errors are logged in those plugins.

Can I exclude specific errors?

Yes, you can use the filter fen_ingore_error, like so:

function fen_ignore_error( $ignore, $error ) { if( $error['file'] == '/home/username/public_html/wp-includes/class-phpass.php' ) { $ignore = true; } return $ignore; } add_filter( 'fen_ignore_error', 'fen_ignore_error', 10, 2 );

The $error variable is an array containing:

$error['type']: (int) The PHP error code
$error['message']: (string) The error message
$error['file']: (string) The path to the file that triggered the error
$error['line']: (int) The line number that triggered the error

Does it support WP CLI

Yup, you bet! You can update the plugin settings using WP CLI, for example to set a default list of error levels, or a notification email address.

The two methods are get_option and update_option. For example:

wp fatal-error-notify get_option slack_notifications

Will tell you if Slack notifications are enabled on the site.

wp fatal-error-notify update_option notification_email [email protected]

Will update the notification email for the site.

You can also update options on multiple sites using xargs:

wp site list --field=url | xargs -n1 -I {} sh -c 'wp --url={} fatal-error-notify update_option notification_email [email protected]'

If you are updating options that are stored as arrays (for example levels or plugins) you can use JSON-formatted values. For an example, use get_option first on the field you are trying to update.

Changelog

1.5.3 – 1/12/2024

Tested for WordPress 6.5.0
Added nonce further secure to admin test error action

1.5.2 – 1/5/2024

Improved – Removed some uncommon error types
Fixed test error endpoint being accessible by non-admins

1.5.1 – 8/11/2023

Tested for WordPress 6.3.0
Improved – “mkdir” warnings will be ignored by default

1.5.0 – 3/20/2023

Tested for WordPress 6.2.0
Added WP CLI endpoint for updating plugin settings

1.4.7 – 11/14/2022

Fixed typo (misplaced parenthesis) checking WARNING level errors in v1.4.6

1.4.6 – 11/1/2022

Tested for WordPress 6.1.0
Improved – Moved actions to shutdown action priority 1, to fix cases where other plugins generate notices or warnings during shutdown after a fatal error
Improved – “rmdir” warnings will be ignored by default
Fixed unlink warnings still triggering notifications if unlink was the first part of the error string

1.4.5 – 2/15/2022

Tested for WordPress 5.9
Improved – “unlink” warnings will be ignored by default (see https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordfence-notification-error-wordfenceclass-php/#post-15187940)
Added upgrade prompt in notification email

1.4.4 – 8/3/2021

Tested for WordPress 5.8
Moved upgrade nag to top of settings page to prevent layout issues on smaller screens

1.4.3 – 12/16/2020

Tested for WordPress 5.6
Fixed PHP notice when HTTP referrer was missing
Added fen_use_wp_mail filter

1.4.2 – 4/3/2020

Tested for WordPress 5.4
Added error level descriptions

1.4.1 – 11/27/2019

Tested for WordPress 5.3

1.4 – 4/26/2019

Added request URI, HTTP Referrer, and current user ID to notifications

1.3 – 4/21/2018

Added “Send Test” button
Rate limiting so notifications are only sent once per hour

1.2 – 2/8/2018

Added filter to ignore errors

1.1

Updated branding
Added link to Pro version

1.0

Initial release