Welcome to the Action Logger plugin for Wordpress.
Do you run a website with more than 1 user and do you want to keep tabs on what is happening within your WordPress wesite ? Then this plugin might be something for you.
This plugin gives you the option to log various (user) actions on your website. Default there are a few actions which can be tracked from within WordPress' core and some from plugins I like/use.
- user registration
- user change
- user delete
- post/page visit (through a shortcode)
- post published (every post type)
- post changed (every post type)
- post deleted (every post type)
- post set to 'pending review' (every post type)
- plugin activated
- plugin deactivated
1.0.0
The overall impact is minimal. This plugin only 'watches' and doesn't interfere with any Wordpress actions.
- Upon activation a new database table named
{your table prefix}_action_logsis created. - Upon activation a handful of default settings (true/false) are stored in the database which was just created.
- Every action is logged real-time, which is 1 row being stored in the database.
- Upon plugin deactivation all settings are dropped to keep the database clean (except the preserve data option).
- Upon plugin deletion (through WP admin) the database table
{your table prefix}_action_logsis dropped (unless preserve data is selected in the options panel). - Upon plugin deletion (through WP admin) the
preserve dataoption is deleted.
Uploading a zip file
- Go to your WordPress Admin plugins page.
- Click on the "Upload" link near the top of the page and browse for the Action Logger zip file
- Activate the plugin by clicking
Activateafter installation.
Uploading the extracted zip by FTP
- Extract the Action Logger zip file.
- Upload them by FTP to your plugins directory (mostly wp-content/plugins).
- Go to your WordPress Admin plugins page.
- Activate the plugin by clicking
Activateafter installation.
You can use this plugin in 2 ways:
- by including a piece of code in your template/plugin (see FAQ below)
- by using the shortcode in your posts/pages
The first option is where the strength of this plugin lies. It offers a lot more logging possibilities, but requires php knowledge. Both options are explained in the F.A.Q.
= Can I disable the logs I'm not interested in =
Yes. This can be done on the settings page.
= Which actions are included in the plugin =
- user registration
- user change
- user delete
- post published
- post changed
- post deleted
- post/page visitor visit (through shortcode)
- post/page registered user visit (through shortcode)
- plugin activated
- plugin deactivated
= Can I use this plugin to track visit to posts/pages like registration confirmations or so ? =
Yes. You can do this by inserting a simple shortcode to the page you want to track. Insert the following shortcode at the end of your post/page:
[actionlogger]
This will create a default log entry with the following description:
If a user is logged in, it will create the following log entry:
#user# visited #title#
If it's a visitor (not logged in), it will create the following log entry:
A visitor visited #title#
- #user# generates
display_namefrom the user who does the action - #title# will be taken from the post/page where the shortcode is inserted
The following values are stored:
- action time - when was the action done (unix timestamp)
- action user - who did the action (integer)
- action - what was the action (string)
- action generator - which 'piece of code' generated the log message (string)
- action description - generated message of what happened (string)
- post_id - post id where the action occured, if appliccable (integer)
The default action is {post_type}_visit , where post_type will be replaced with the post type involved.
The default value for generator is Shortcode.
You can override the default message with a variable.
This is defined as this:
[actionlogger message="did something on the website"]
This will trigger a log entry with the following description:
#user# did something on the website
= Can I log my own custom action actions ? =
Of course, that's the whole reason I wrote this plugin; 'to be able to log custom actions'. To use the logger, you need to add a piece of code on the place where you want the tracking to occur. This can be in a plugin or a theme.
ActionLogger::al_log_user_action();
To make sure your site won't break if you deactivate the plugin, wrap it in a class_exists() as follows:
if ( class_exists( 'ActionLogger' ) ) {
ActionLogger::al_log_user_action();
}
The function can contain 4 variables which are default all set to false. Use them in this order:
- $action
- $action_generator
- $action description
- post_id
This is defined as:
if ( class_exists( 'ActionLogger' ) ) {
ActionLogger::al_log_user_action( $action, $generator, $message, $post_id );
}
= Can I export my logs to CSV ? =
Yes, check the Misc page (in the plugin).
= Why are some variables not stored as a value but as a variable ? =
The values are 'generated' upon display/export. This way you always see the current name/title of a user/post, which makes searching easier. For example if a user changes his name 5 times, it's harder to track who it was. The same goes for a post title. Now the current state/value is always shown.
= Which plugins do you plan to include in the plugin ? =
If you're a plugin author and you would like to see your hooks logged in this plugin, please contact me @ https://berryplasman.com.
- - Add shortcode to track thank you pages and other status pages
- - Add panel to select what to track
- - Add WP errors
- - Add option to select which user roles can see the logger
- - Add pagination in overview
- - Add filters in overview to filter certain actions/generators
- - Add option to 'keep logs for X days'
- - Add auto-purge logs after x days
- - Add EM registration approve
- - Add EM hooks
- - Add S2Member hooks
- - Add WooCommerce hooks
- - Add BuddyPress hooks
- - Add WP4MC hooks