Sanctuary Ranger Crash Recorder

When a WordPress site hits a fatal error, you usually get a stack trace and nothing about what led up to it. Sanctuary Ranger keeps a short rolling log of recent activity and freezes a snapshot the moment a fatal error happens.

What it records (cheap events only):

• Which WordPress milestone the request reached (plugins_loaded, init, template_redirect and so on)
• Outbound HTTP calls: host, path, status and duration. Query strings are never stored.
• PHP warnings, notices and deprecations (file, line, message)
• Failed emails (error message only)
• Request method, path, PHP and WordPress version
• The list of active plugins and the theme name (stored in the snapshot on your own site, used to build a replay)
• Which plugin, theme or WordPress core file the error came from

What it never records: cookies, authentication headers, POST bodies, query-string values, email contents or recipients.

Optional features (all off by default):

• Email alert when a fatal error is recorded (max one every 10 minutes)
• Webhook alert: sends a one-line summary to an HTTPS URL you provide
• Auto-quarantine: deactivates a plugin you have explicitly ticked if it causes repeated fatal errors within a time window you choose
• Replay in WordPress Playground: build a throwaway copy of the crash environment to experiment in. Clearly labelled as approximate
• Early recorder (optional): one small must-use file that starts the recorder before other plugins, installed and removed with a button
• Hook trace (developer option): also records the last WordPress hooks that ran in the crashing request. It adds some overhead, so leave it off on busy sites

Sanctuary Ranger does not prevent crashes or fix them. It helps you find the cause faster.

Optional Pro add-on

Everything described above is free and fully working. A separate add-on, Sanctuary Ranger Pro, is sold on rachel-m-harrison.com and adds crash grouping, Slack, Discord and Microsoft Teams alert formats, and a weekly digest email. It is installed as its own plugin and needs a license key ($39 per year for one site). This plugin contains no locked features and works the same with or without it.

External services

This plugin contacts no external service by default. If you click “Open in Playground” on a snapshot, your browser opens https://playground.wordpress.net with a blueprint in the link. The blueprint contains the PHP version and the WordPress.org slugs of your active plugins, and it stays in the part of the address after “#”, which browsers do not send to servers. Playground then downloads those plugins from WordPress.org. This plugin itself sends nothing, and nothing happens until you click. Playground terms and privacy policy: https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/

The “Go Pro” button on the Tools > Sanctuary Ranger screen is a plain link to https://rachel-m-harrison.com/rmh-shop/?buy=sanctuary-ranger-pro. Nothing is sent to that address unless you click it.

If you enter a webhook URL in Tools > Sanctuary Ranger, the plugin sends a POST request containing a one-line error summary and your site URL to that address when a fatal error occurs. You choose the destination; the plugin does not use any third-party service of its own.