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Keeping track of all your site activity is difficult, time consuming, and confusing especially when you have tens of users or more.
Incorporating an activity logger plugin such as the Activity Log (free) or the WP Activity Log (free + premium) for monitoring and tracking every activity in WordPress is a solution. The benefits of these plugins include automatic tracking of user logins, user profile changes, content updates, file exports, network changes, and so much more.
The plugins run behind the scenes which helps to maintain satisfactory site and admin performance. The opportunity to automate activity logging helps to better organization and management of your site and its content. However, if your site is heavily trafficked it may cause performance issues since it is logging all activity.
Activity Log (Free)
How to Install Activity Log
To get started, download and install Activity Log by Activity Log Team
Begin by navigating to Plugins on the dashboard, Add New. From here, there are two options for installation.
Option 1 is to Search for “Activity Log:
Option 2 is to Upload Plugin. Go to the plugin page, download the zip file, and upload into the designated section.
* Check if the plugin has been successfully installed and active under your Installed Plugins.
Access Activity Page
In order to view your activity log, navigate to Activity Log on the side bar. This will produce a filter view of all activities on your site.
In this view, you will be able to filter by:
- Time : Today, Yesterday, Week, Month
- Roles : Administrator, Editor, Author, Guest, Contributor, Subscriber
- Users: (defined in your Users sections)
- Types: Attachment, Plugin, Post, User
- Actions: Activated, Added, Deactivated, Deleted, Logged In, Updated
The creation of posts will have a consistent type and label. As comments are under posts, the label will correspond to posts. However, any added media will be displayed as a type attachment.
Configuration options
Configuration of Activity Log is limited but there is an option for record retention.
Under Settings, there will be a “Keep Logs for” option which allows you to set how many days to save the activity log. It is not recommended to keep it forever. There is also an option to Reset Database which will clear the activities immediately instead of waiting for the cycle to restart.
NOTE: High traffic websites may want to keep the number low.
WP Activity Log (Free + Premium)
How to Install WP Activity Log
Similar to the Activity Log plugin installation, download and install WP Activity Log.
After navigating to Plugins> Add New, the first installation option is by searching for a plugin.
The second option is to navigate to the plugin page, downloading the zip, and uploading into WordPress.
Access Activity Page
In order to view your activity log, navigate to WP Activity Log on the side bar. WP Activity Log does not offer filtering, but it does allow the user to change from list view to Grid View.
Configuration Options
To view the Activity Log retention or modify the data storage, navigate to Settings. Within settings, move into the Activity Log Viewer.
You can also choose what to exclude in the activity logs. This is helpful for removing the administrators. In order to do this, navigate to the Exclude Objects tab within Settings.
Enable/Disable Events
This feature is available for a more in depth monitoring of activities. For example, if you wanted to remove the alert when a user publishes a post, you would simply uncheck this option.
Summary
These plugins allow for automatic monitoring and record keeping of the activity on a site. It removes the need for someone to log data which inevitably allows more focus on the content and management of the site itself. The records are easy to view and can be customized to show everything you need to be tracked.
On larger sites or heavily trafficked sites, these plugins may cause performance issues if it is set to automatically track everything and keep it in storage for extended periods of time. Configuration of record retention is possible for both and WP Activity Log takes it a step further with more options in the settings.
