Did my WordPress site crash? Which plugin did it?

Updated 2026-11-01

Short answer: when WordPress crashes, visitors see "There has been a critical error on this website" or a blank white page. The real error, and the plugin or theme that caused it, is hidden. WordPress may email the site's admin address about it, but that email often goes to an old address or to spam.

How to check it yourself

  1. Open the site in a private window. The critical error message or a blank page means it crashed.
  2. Check the admin email inbox (and spam) for "Your Site is Experiencing a Technical Issue". It names the plugin or theme and has a recovery link.
  3. Read the PHP error log in your hosting panel. The fatal error line shows the file path, and the folder under wp-content/plugins or wp-content/themes is the culprit.

What Preventionlabs shows

With the Preventionlabs plugin and crash alerts turned on, a crash is caught the moment WordPress's own fatal error handler sees it, and new lines in the site's PHP error logs are read too. You get an email saying which plugin or theme broke the site, what went wrong in plain words, and how to fix it. The same crash emails at most once every 6 hours. Turning crash alerts on adds one file to the site to catch crashes; turning them off removes it. Crash alerts use 1 credit a day per site. A report also shows the WordPress version and plugins visible from outside, and which pages fail.

Price

Free to sign up, with 2 free reports on each domain. Then US$28 a month for 1,500 credits.

Run your first report free