Error logging | How to configure error logging?

Introduction

WP Full Pay runs on thousands of websites comprising different WordPress, plugin, and theme versions.

Each plugin version undergoes rigorous testing but some errors happen on customers’ websites that plugin developers cannot reproduce in their test environments.

The plugin has a facility that keeps a log of these errors, and provides the means to download the error logs so that customers can send it to the plugin developers for further analysis.

This article describes how error logging should be configured and used.

How to configure error logging?

You can configure error logging on the “Full Pay → Settings → Error logging” page in WP admin:

The settings page is composed of two sections. The upper section lets you download the log, and lower sections lets you configure the logging behavior:

Downloading the error log

The “Log entries” section indicates how many log entries are currently stored in the log.

The log can be downloaded by pressing the “Download log” button. A .txt file is generated which can be saved locally.

The log can be cleared by clicking in the “Empty log” link.

Configuring error logging

The “Log settings” section lets you configure the logging behavior.

The following table summarizes the settings:

Option	Description
Logging level	The severity of errors that should be logged.

Set to “Error” by default.
The plugin developers might ask you to set it differently.
Logging channels	The channels to which log entries are sent.

The “Wordpress database” channel is mandatory.
The “Webserver error log” channel is used only by developers.
Behavior / Catch all errors not caught by plugins	Some errors are caused by plugin conflicts which can be analyzed only when this option is on.

Leave this option off by default, and turn it on only when you’re reproducing an issue, and sending the log to plugin developers.

How to work with logs

When everything works as expected

If you don’t have any plugin issues, then:

1. Set the logging level to “Error”.
2. Don’t log to the “Webserver error log” channel.
3. Turn off catching all errors not caught by plugins.

From time to time, glance at the number log entries in the log to see if there is anything that should be reported to plugin developers.

When you have a plugin issue

If the plugin developers ask for the log, then:

1. Set the logging level to “Error”.
2. Turn on catching all errors not caught by plugins.
3. Reproduce the issue you’re experiencing.
4. Download and send the log to the plugin developers.
5. Turn off catching all errors not caught by plugins.

Log maintenance

When everything works as expected, or you’ve reported errors to the plugin developers and there are hundreds or thousands of entries in the log, you can empty the log by pressing the “Empty log” button.