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Fatal Error Notify

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Fatal Error Notify

by Jack Arturo

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Description

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.

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

  1. Admin configuration settings

    Admin configuration settings

  2. Example email received when an error has been reported

    Example email received when an error has been reported

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@domain.com

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@domain.com'

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.

Plugin doesn't work, throws error

By jogurtt on April 15, 2025

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function fatal_error_notify_test_error_function() in /wp-content/plugins/fatal-error-notify/includes/admin/class-admin.php:68

Really useful little plugin

By tufty on February 18, 2025

Pretty much all great. Thank you. It's really useful.

Fast responses and does what it should.

By Miikka (miikkamakela) on January 11, 2024

Nothing bad to say at least up until now. 😃

Fantastic plugin that I can't live without

By Dale Reardon (dalereardonmdm) on August 12, 2023

This is an amazing plugin that will save you so much time. The Pro upgrade is also really worth it and the support from the developer is some of the best I have ever experienced. The plugin really helps you pinpoint and diagnose errors, often well before you would notice them visually on the frontend of the site. Getting the error stack trace from the plugin also really helps you get better support from other plugin devs when their plugin has an error on your site. Highly recommended. Dale.

BEST PLUGIN - PERIOD

By Steve (aksteve) on May 30, 2023

Shame on WordPress for notifying us of fatal errors but supplying no information. And HUGE KUDOS to the creators of this plugin who picked up the slack. This plugin will let you know WHERE the fatal error occurred, which is vital when troubleshooting.

Why WordPress doesn't do this is a mystery. WordPress just get less and less user-friendly. It's plugins like this that help make WordPress better.

HEY WORDPRESS - TAKE A LESSON FROM THIS PLUGIN. This is a HELPFUL plugin and it is USER-FRIENDLY. Unfortunately, all things that WordPress is slowly no longer being....

Life Saver!!

By Kyle204 on February 6, 2023

Amazing tool when you don't have access to backend logs to troubleshoot the issue. Great work!

Helpful!

By Liew Cheon-Fong (lcf) on January 19, 2023

Simple and useful plugin for you who managing a WordPress site. Make troubleshooting so much easier! (no more enable/disable WP_Debug mode)

Awesome helper

By flowdee on December 12, 2022

just discovered this little nugget and I'm very happy with it!

Extremely helpful plugin

By Matheus Martins (MatheusFD) on July 7, 2022

Just came here to say that this is an amazing plugin and it's extremely helpful during troubleshooting. keep up the good work!

Great Support Service!

By romonoutic on December 23, 2021

I came with a simple issue and they gave me a solution for the free version of this plugin!

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
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