Monitor

Monitor is a plugin designed to add monitoring capabilities to WordPress sites, focusing on assisting with spotting problems and collecting data for debugging purposes. It is positioned as a tool that has evolved from real-world support experiences, implementing features and logging mechanisms needed to address specific customer issues. The plugin is accessible through the WordPress "Tools" menu once installed and activated, and can be found via the WordPress plugin repository or downloaded directly from the developer's site.

A central feature of Monitor is its contextual event logging. The plugin records the context in which an event occurs, such as whether it happened during a background process (cron), via the command line interface (cli), during a frontend page visit, backend activity, AJAX call, REST API call, or PHP command line execution. While the plugin strives to capture context accurately, it acknowledges that this is not always possible.

Monitor provides detailed tracking of all emails sent using the wp_mail() function, including whether each attempt succeeded or failed. It records additional information such as filters applied to email data and the duration required to send each message. This can help site administrators and developers diagnose issues with email delivery, identify hosting-related problems, and optimize email sending performance, especially for sites that send large volumes of emails. The tool also offers guidance on interpreting email delivery results and troubleshooting common errors related to mail function failures, SMTP configuration issues, and frontend/backend discrepancies.

Another key feature is scheduler monitoring. Monitor logs every activation of the WordPress scheduler, tracks scheduled jobs, and reports on late or missed tasks. It provides an overview of scheduler activity, including whether the activation frequency meets the requirements for recurring jobs and a graphical representation of scheduling intervals. The plugin highlights potential problems when scheduled tasks are not executed, such as PHP execution time limits, fatal errors in background tasks, or issues caused by object caching plugins. This information is intended to help administrators and developers understand and resolve background task execution problems.

Monitor is intended for WordPress site administrators and developers who need to investigate operational issues, debug background processes, or ensure reliable email and scheduler functionality within their sites.