FatalGuard – PHP Error Log Viewer, Debug Log & Fatal Error Alerts

FatalGuard turns WordPress error handling into something you can actually see and act on. It reads your debug log and PHP error log from a fast admin-bar viewer, captures the real fatal error hiding behind the “There has been a critical error” white screen of death, and sends an instant fatal error notification to Telegram (Slack, email and Discord in Pro).

Every fatal notification includes a one-tap recovery link. Open it on your phone to deactivate the crashing plugin and bring the site back — it works even when wp-admin is down and you can’t log in. Nothing is deleted; re-enable the plugin once it’s fixed.

And in Pro, you can debug your site by chatting with an AI. Connect Claude, Cursor, VS Code or any MCP client to FatalGuard and ask, in plain English — “what’s the most recurring error this week?”, “which deprecations are in my theme?” — and it answers from your site’s real error history through a read-only, API-key-secured MCP server.

FatalGuard manages file logging for you — flip one switch and it writes the standard WP_DEBUG constants to wp-config.php (restoring your original values when you switch it off). And it is built to never brick your site: the fatal-error handler always falls back to WordPress’s own recovery, with a file kill-switch and self-disarm sentinel as safety nets.

Free error log & debug log viewer, fatal error alerts & one-tap recovery

• Admin-bar log viewer — read your WordPress debug.log and PHP error_log in a fast tabbed overlay with live tail, no FTP or SSH.
• Grouped errors — repeated errors collapse into one entry with a count and last-seen, so the error that matters isn’t buried in noise.
• Search & filter log entries to find the error that matters.
• One-switch file logging — FatalGuard writes the standard WP_DEBUG_LOG constants to wp-config.php for you, and restores your originals when you switch it off.
• Fatal error capture — catches the actual PHP fatal error behind the WordPress white screen / critical-error page and shows you the message, file and line.
• Instant Telegram error alert — get a message the moment a fatal error happens, with built-in anti-spam (dedupe, burst-cap and a circuit-breaker) so a fatal loop can never flood your phone. Telegram alerts are included in the free plugin.
• One-tap recovery — the fatal alert includes a signed link that deactivates only the crashing plugin and restores the site. It runs before regular plugins load, so it works even when wp-admin is down — no FTP, SSH or login needed. Nothing is deleted; re-enable the plugin when it’s fixed.
• JavaScript error capture — front-end JS errors are logged in your admin session (requires the admin bar; visitor-side JS is not captured).
• Automatic secret redaction — database passwords, auth keys, API keys and tokens are scrubbed from your logs and alerts before they’re ever shown or sent.
• Private, web-protected log storage — logs live in a hardened directory that can’t be read from a browser, with non-guessable paths.
• Production-safe by design — full error detail only in development; on production your visitors always get WordPress’s own recovery page, never a leak.
• Never-brick design — a self-installing, self-healing drop-in that always chains to WordPress’s native recovery. A DISABLE kill-switch file is your no-SSH escape hatch.
• Status / diagnostics tab — see exactly what logging is on and where the log lives.

FatalGuard Pro

Everything in free, plus:

• Ask AI what’s crashing your site — AI access (MCP). Connect Claude, Cursor, VS Code or any MCP client and just ask, in plain English: “What’s the most recurring error this week?”, “Which deprecations are in my active theme?”, “What started failing after my last deploy?” The AI reads your real error history through FatalGuard’s built-in, read-only MCP server — secured by a revocable API key, and nothing leaves your site except to the AI client you choose to connect.
• Searchable error history — every fatal kept in a database, grouped with counts and first/last-seen (free is live tail only). This history is what the AI reads.
• Multi-channel alerts — Slack, email, Discord and custom webhooks alongside Telegram.
• Multiple Telegram targets with per-site routing.
• Stealth mode — hide the plugin from other administrators.
• Weekly email digest of your site’s errors.

On the roadmap: a central dashboard — every client site’s fatal errors in one view, with remote one-tap recovery for any of them.

Learn more about FatalGuard Pro »

What FatalGuard does

FatalGuard catches the fatal error that took the site down, tells you about it, and gives you a one-tap link to fix it — deactivating the crashing plugin even when you can’t log in. It’s a debug log viewer, a fatal-error monitor, an alerting system, and a recovery tool in one, engineered so the error handler itself can never white-screen your site.

External services

FatalGuard does not connect to any external service on its own. It contacts a third-party service only when you configure one, and only to deliver the alerts you asked for.

Telegram (optional — free tier). If you connect a Telegram bot in the settings, FatalGuard talks to the Telegram Bot API (https://api.telegram.org) in four cases: (1) during the connect wizard, your bot token is used to detect the chat you pressed Start in; (2) when you click “Send test message” while setting it up; (3) whenever a PHP fatal error is captured on your site — this sends the alert message; and (4) once a day, a silent health check validates that the bot token and chat still work, so a revoked bot is surfaced instead of failing quietly (no message is posted to the chat). An alert message contains the details needed to diagnose the crash — the error message, the file path and line number, the request URL, the site URL, the timestamp and the PHP version (secrets such as keys and passwords are scrubbed out first). Nothing is sent unless you have entered a bot token; messages go only to the Telegram chat you chose.

This service is provided by Telegram, not by FatalGuard. See Telegram’s Terms of Service (https://telegram.org/tos) and Privacy Policy (https://telegram.org/privacy).

Slack, Discord and custom webhook alerts (optional — Pro). FatalGuard Pro can additionally deliver the same fatal-error alert to a Slack incoming webhook (https://hooks.slack.com), a Discord webhook (https://discord.com/api/webhooks) or any custom webhook URL you enter. As with Telegram, a message is sent only to an endpoint you configure, only when you send a test or when a fatal error is captured, and it contains the same diagnostic fields (error message, file, line, request URL, site URL, timestamp, PHP version — with secrets scrubbed). These channels are inactive in the free plugin. Slack is provided by Slack Technologies — see Slack’s Terms (https://slack.com/terms-of-service) and Privacy Policy (https://slack.com/privacy-policy). Discord is provided by Discord Inc. — see Discord’s Terms (https://discord.com/terms) and Privacy Policy (https://discord.com/privacy). A custom webhook sends data to whatever server URL you supply; its handling is governed by that server’s own terms.

FatalGuard sends no analytics, telemetry or usage data anywhere, and does not phone home for updates (updates come through WordPress.org).