Observability in practice, so that issues have nowhere to hide
Summary
‘It works on my machine’, ‘We can’t test that in staging’, ‘It seems to have been broken for a while’… This sounds familiar to many of us, and this is what I want to fix with this talk! I will share practical ways to approach observability, and move beyond logs to investigate and fix issues on websites, plugins & themes. I’ll demonstrate how modern observability turns reactive firefighting into proactive problem-solving, drawing from our experience maintaining some of WordPress’s most popular plugins. The audience will discover:
Real-world examples of how these tools helped our teams manage daily deployments effectively
- How to implement error monitoring platforms like Sentry to catch issues before users do (thanks to open-source products)
- Using Metabase for data-driven insights to proactively observe and understand issues (open-source & free!)
- Visual regression testing with BackstopJS to prevent UI breaks (open-source and free!)
Previous sessions
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WordCamp Europe 2025
Yesterday, I came back from WordCamp Europe 2025 in Basel, where I had the chance to be both as a speaker and as a sponsor with group.one, and our brands WP Rocket, RankMath & WP.one! My talk at WordCamp Europe 2025: From Reactive to Proactive: Modern Observability for WordPress at […]
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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.
Targeted audience
Whether you’re a developer or managing websites at scale, you’ll learn practical approaches to spend more time building features instead of fixing bugs. Audiences from website/business owners (even not technical), to developers & agencies can join!
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.