Accessing WordPress Error Logs on Your Site

In this article, we will review how to access WordPress error logs for your website to assist in debugging a problem and identifying theme and plugin errors.

This error log file is automatically generated and errors can be reviewed via the MyPressable Control Panel, WP-CLI, or SFTP.

MyPressable Control Panel Logs

PHP Errors

The Logs tab can be accessed from a site’s settings page (https://my.pressable.com/sites > select individual site > Logs tab). Once, there, click on PHP Logs.

For easy access and quick filtering, you can choose which error logs to show. These are sorted under 4 Status Codes and can be selected from the drop-down menu:

The Get Latest button loads the most recent logs. The logs are displayed on the Control Panel directly and are formatted to give important information at a quick glance.

The Email PHP Logs button will send a CSV file with the most recent 500 logs of the site to your registered email address.

Webserver Logs

The Logs tab can be accessed from a site’s settings page (https://my.pressable.com/sites > select individual site > Logs tab). Once, there, click on Webserver Logs:

Pressable provides the last seven days of server logs, 200 per page.

For easy access and quick filtering, you can choose which logs to show based on Status Code, Request Type, and searching by User IP.

More Webserver log information can be found here: https://pressable.com/knowledgebase/accessing-web-server-logs-for-your-site/

SFTP

SFTP Access

A php-errors log is located above the site root, in a folder called /tmp. You will need to connect to the server via SFTP and then move up one directory (outside of the /htdocs directory) to find the /tmp folder.

WP-CLI

You can also access the PHP error log via SSH. To view the most recent PHP error log’s entries, you’ll need to enter the following command: wp php-errors

WP_DEBUG_LOG

You can enable a WordPress debug log through the wp-config.php file found via SFTP in your site root. You will need to edit wp-config.php and look for a line that reads:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', false );

Replace it with these three lines:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );

Your debug.log file will then be generated within the /wp-content directory.

WooCommerce wc-logs

WP Admin Access

If your site includes a WooCommerce store, WooCommerce-specific logs can be found under WooCommerce > Status > Logs as outlined here: https://woocommerce.com/document/understanding-the-woocommerce-system-status-report/#error-logs

SFTP Access

WooCommerce logs can also be found within /wp-content/uploads/wc-logs. Those can be accessed through SFTP.