--- title: "WordPress error message and debug.log decoder | WP Ministry" url: https://wpministry.co/tools/wordpress-error-decoder/ description: "Paste an error message or log lines and see what each means, which plugin or theme it points at, and what to do first. Read in your browser; nothing is sent." lang: en-US --- Skip to content # WordPress error message and debug.log decoder Paste an error message or lines from your log and see what each one means, which plugin or theme it points at, and what to do first. Read in your browser; nothing is sent. ## Where to find the message What a visitor sees on a broken page is usually short: "There has been a critical error on this website." The line that says what went wrong is written to a log. - **WordPress's own log** is the file `debug.log` in the `wp-content` folder. It is written only while `WP_DEBUG` and `WP_DEBUG_LOG` are switched on in `wp-config.php`. - **Your host's PHP error log** is in the hosting control panel, often under a name such as "Errors" or "Logs", or in a file named `error_log` beside the site's files. - **A browser's own message**, such as ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS, can be pasted as it is. Paste the whole line. The file and the line number at its end are what say which plugin or theme is involved. ## What it reads, and what it does with it The tool looks for messages it knows in what you paste, and for the path of a file. From the path it works out whether the file belongs to a plugin, the theme or WordPress itself. The same message repeated in a log is counted and shown once. A log can hold the paths of your server and the names of your plugins. That is why this runs in your browser: what you paste is not sent to us, not kept, and not included in anything we measure. ## What it cannot tell you It explains a message. It has not seen your site, so it cannot say why the message appeared today. If the first thing it suggests does not clear the error, the error fixes (https://wpministry.co/errors/) go through each cause in order. ## Common questions Is it safe to paste my log here? What you paste stays in your browser. The page makes no request with it and keeps nothing. If you would rather not paste a whole log, one line is enough: the one that begins "PHP Fatal error" at the time the site broke. My log is full of Deprecated and Warning lines. Is the site broken? Usually not. Those lines are PHP reporting code that is out of date or sloppy while carrying on. They matter when they begin after a PHP upgrade, because the same code may stop working in the version after. A line that says Fatal error is the one that stops a page. The file it names is part of WordPress itself. Is WordPress broken? Rarely. A plugin or theme often calls one of WordPress's functions wrongly, and PHP reports the WordPress file where the call ended up. Look further along the same line, or at the lines just before it, for a file inside wp-content. It says nothing matches. What now? Paste the full line with its file and line number. If it is a message from a plugin rather than from PHP or WordPress, search that plugin's support forum for its exact words, or ask us. ## Would you rather we read the log? Tell us what you see and paste the line. We reply with the cause and a fixed quote, and the diagnosis is free. Get a free diagnosis (https://wpministry.co/free-diagnosis/) May we measure how this site is used? A yes notes the pages of this visit and loads Google Analytics. A no keeps and loads nothing. See the cookies page (https://wpministry.co/legal/cookies/). If you say yes, we note the pages you look at during this visit and load Google Analytics. If you say no, nothing is kept and nothing is loaded. The site works the same either way. 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