Nick's Hotaru CMS Blog

One thing I'd like to add to Hotaru during beta testing is error logging. I think it would be extremely helpful for developers if errors were logged to a text file whenever they occur, and in some cases, have an email sent to the site admin about those errors.

An example of when this would be useful is with the RPX plugin which I'm working on now. When a new user registers, an attempt is made to map the database record of that user with his or her record on the RPX server. Should this mapping fail, the user will be unable to log in despite being registered in the database. I actually had this exact problem for about four months when I first used RPX with JapanSoc. The problem turned out to be shoddy coding on my part, but I had no idea how many people had registered, but were unable to login because of a mapping failure.

If an email is sent to the site admin when a such a problem occurs, you could manually correct it. In the case above, you could manually map the user with RPX and let the user know they can now log in.

vBulletin has such a system. As the admin of this website, I occasionally get emails about database errors which I could show to the vBulletin staff if necessary. Very handy stuff indeed.