Observability in practice, so that issues have nowhere to hide
Hook
“I can’t reproduce it,” “we’ll need to add logs,” “we can’t test that in staging,” “it seems to have been broken for a while,” “it works locally,” …
If you hear these phrases regularly, this talk is for you.
If you often feel like you’re a step behind on bugs, this talk is also for you.
Previous sessions
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Observability in practice at Dutch PHP Conference 2025
On March 21st, 2025, I presented “Observability in Practice, so that issues have nowhere to hide” at the Dutch PHP Conference (DPC), WebDevCon & AppDevCon 2025 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Observability in practice – DPC2025 par Mathieu Lamiot Mathieu LamiotI am Mathieu Lamiot, a France-based tech-enthusiast engineer passionate about system design […]
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“L’observabilité en pratique” at Azur Tech Winter 2024 (French)
On November 26th, 2024, I presented “L’observabilité en pratique, pour que les problèmes n’aient nulle part où se cacher” at Azur Tech Winter 2024 at Sophia-Antipolis, France. Observabilité en pratique – Azur Tech Winter 2024 par Mathieu Lamiot Mathieu LamiotI am Mathieu Lamiot, a France-based tech-enthusiast engineer passionate about system […]
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Observability for WordPress at WordCamp Romania 2024
On November 15th, 2024, I presented “Observability for WordPress in practice: so that issues have nowhere to hide” at WordCamp Romania 2024.
Summary
During this talk, I introduce the concept of observability and how it can help developers always stay ahead, increase application quality, and thus have more time to add value!
I then present the concrete methods and tools we have implemented at WP Media to maintain and monitor our products, which are used on over 4 million websites, and our services, with daily production deployments and several thousand requests per second; all managed by only a dozen developers.
I briefly revisit the basics, but enhanced:
- Standardized logs that anyone can add,
- On-demand test environments
And I discuss more advanced methods and tools to simplify their implementation:
- Error & Performance tracking, Tracing, and technical alerts with Sentry
- Functional alerts and data observability with Metabase
- Canary releases
- Shadow releases
- Health Probes
If these techniques are unfamiliar to you, if you have difficulty implementing them, or if you simply want a refresher, this talk is a great opportunity to hear about practical experiences and tips on observability!
Main takeaways
- Monitoring vs. Observability
- Standard log implementation for everyone
- Error reporting, Tracing, Telemetry
- Technical vs. Functional Alerting
- Tooling: Metabase, Sentry
Targeted audience
This talk is primarily designed for developers, team leaders, and engineering managers. More senior tech profiles can also benefit from this talk. Attendees with previous experience with back-end services will fully benefit from this talk.