Gotta Catch ‘Em All: Logging Improvements

Over the past week, the Pokémon Go craze has taken the world by storm, including the WordPress community. WP Engine employees have been enjoying the game as well. In the spirit of Pokémon’s “Catch ‘em all” mantra, we decided to level up the logging capabilities for all the sites you host on WP Engine to make it easier than ever to catch and take action on errors and uncached requests.

Today we’re excited to announce the addition of Apache and Nginx access logs in the User Portal, along with improved log filtering for error logs in the User Portal.

Apache and Nginx Access Logs
Server access logs record all requests processed by the server and can be useful for understanding how your site’s cachability affects performance. Apache access logs contain the hits to your website that are uncached and need to be processed by the server. Nginx access logs contain all hits to your website including requests for static, cached, and uncached content.

Both of these types of production access logs can be found on the ‘Access logs’ tab inside the User Portal for all of your installs.

Improved Filtering
Simply having easy access to your logs is not enough though. Rather than wading through a sea of logs, we’ve created a new filter and search system that will help you find just the log item you are searching to inspect. The search bars for both access and error logs now let you search for a text string inside of a log. You can search for a particular IP address, error message, timestamp, or URL.

For error logs we’ve also created a new dynamic filter that will let you find the type of log you’re looking for. Sometimes you need to quickly find a particular error and by searching just the error type logs, you can quickly find a bug on your site. This dynamic filter will automatically show various types of logs in your site, from warning, to errors, to notices–you’ll never be more than a click away. You can also use the search bar in tandem with filters for more advanced log searching.

Also, did you notice we now show staging error logs in the user portal? Well, we do!

We hope that you find these additional log and filtering capabilities helpful as you track down those cacheability issues and squash those bugs.

Happy debugging! Now go catch ‘em all!

Taylor McCaslin works as a Product Manager at WP Engine. He speaks at Technology and WordPress events around the country. WordPress has been Taylor’s platform of choice for over 6 years, he even paid his way through college by freelancing as a WordPress developer! When not creating products that captivate and delight, you’ll find Taylor geeking out with the latest tech gadget or experiencing the expansive Austin art scene. Follow Taylor on Twitter @Taylor4484.