KloudStack Observability for Azure

KloudStack Observability for Azure connects a WordPress site to Azure Application Insights, so you can see request performance, errors and browser telemetry in Azure Monitor alongside the rest of your Azure estate.

The plugin is built specifically for WordPress hosted on Azure. It reads its configuration from App Service application settings automatically, names telemetry using the Azure site, slot and region so one Application Insights resource can serve many sites, and produces a telemetry schema designed to work with Azure Monitor workbooks.

Features

• Server-side request telemetry with normalised route names
• Uncaught exception and fatal error telemetry
• Browser telemetry via the official Application Insights JavaScript SDK
• Correlation between browser and server telemetry using W3C trace context
• Automatic Azure environment detection — App Service, Container Apps, AKS and Virtual Machines
• Cloud role naming from the Azure site and deployment slot
• Configurable sampling to control Azure ingestion cost
• Privacy controls: IP anonymisation, query-string redaction, consent gating
• Built-in diagnostics self-test and WordPress Site Health integration

Designed for Azure

This plugin assumes Azure hosting. It will run elsewhere if you supply a connection string, but Azure environment enrichment will be unavailable and support is limited to Azure deployments.

Performance

Telemetry is buffered during the request and transmitted only after the response has been released to the visitor, so Application Insights latency or availability never affects your site’s response time. A circuit breaker suspends transmission if the ingestion endpoint becomes unreachable.

Trademarks

Azure, Microsoft Azure and Application Insights are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. This is an independent plugin and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Microsoft.

External services

This plugin sends data to Microsoft Azure Application Insights, a third-party service operated by Microsoft. It does this so that telemetry collected from your site can be stored, queried and visualised in Azure Monitor.

What is sent, and when: on each non-excluded page request, the plugin transmits the request route, duration, HTTP response code, and contextual data about the WordPress installation (WordPress version, PHP version, active theme, plugin count, memory usage, query count) to the Application Insights ingestion endpoint configured for your Azure resource. Uncaught exceptions and fatal errors are transmitted with their message, type and stack trace. If browser telemetry is enabled, the Application Insights JavaScript SDK is loaded in visitors’ browsers and sends page views, AJAX calls and JavaScript errors directly to the same endpoint.

Nothing is sent until you turn it on. All telemetry is off by default. On a fresh install the plugin transmits nothing at all — not server-side request data, and not browser data — until you enable it on the settings screen. Browser telemetry is a second, separate opt-in: no JavaScript SDK is loaded and no visitor data is collected in the browser unless you enable that as well. Server-side telemetry additionally requires an Application Insights connection string; without one, nothing leaves your site regardless of the settings.

Visitor data: client IP addresses are anonymised before transmission by default. Query strings are redacted against an allowlist by default. Request and response headers, which may contain cookies and authorization data, are not transmitted unless you explicitly enable that option.

Cookies are off by default. When you enable browser telemetry it runs in cookie-less mode, so the SDK sets no ai_user or ai_session cookies and, in most jurisdictions, no visitor consent obligation arises from using it.

The trade-off: without those cookies Application Insights cannot group requests into sessions or distinguish returning visitors, so reports show page and dependency timings but not “users” or “sessions”. If you need that aggregation, turn cookie-less mode off in Settings — but the cookies then require visitor consent in most jurisdictions, and obtaining it becomes your responsibility. A kloudstack_obs_has_consent filter is provided so a consent management platform can gate injection.

Endpoints contacted: the Application Insights ingestion endpoint from your connection string (typically https://<region>.in.applicationinsights.azure.com or https://dc.services.visualstudio.com), and https://js.monitor.azure.com for the JavaScript SDK unless the bundled local copy is selected in settings.

Microsoft terms of use: https://azure.microsoft.com/support/legal/ Microsoft privacy statement: https://privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement

No data is sent to KloudStack. The plugin does not phone home.