Do you have a website with a pretty good amount of users working on it?
Do you feel the need to keep a tab on what your users are doing to your website from the backend? Then this article is going to be helpful for you.
Many times allowing multiple people access the backend of the website gives the website owners jitters and leave them worried that something can happen to their website if proper attention is not given to the activities of the users.
This mostly happens if your website is accepting guest articles or you are taking help of a freelancer who you don’t know personally very well.
Not knowing what your users might be doing can bring a big toll on your website.
What if one day, because of some minor change a user, brings down the whole website? Who will you blame then?
How about a way by which you can track what and when they do it.
There is a way by which you can save your website from this chaos and it all can be done with the User Activity Log plugin.
Let’s see what the User Activity Log plugin has to offer.
What is the User Activity Log Tool?
With the User Activity Log tool allows you to keep track of the activities and helps in monitoring all the activities occurs on the admin side of the website.
This tool keeps you posted about the WordPress core updates, Post updates, User Activities, etc.
Once you get the User Activity log tool installed and activated, it starts to record who and when is someone is performing an action, whether it be creating a new post or if a file is being exported.
Not just that, you can also set the plugin to notify you when a specific user or a group of users do any activity on the system.
Although this is enough for any typical day, the story does not end there. The User Activity plugin has a pro version as well which takes the user activity tracking and reporting to a whole new level.
But before we jump into it, let’s first see how you can use the User Activity Log plugin.
Download and Installation
If you want to try out the User Activity Pro plugin, you can purchase it from Code Canyon library. If you want to go with the Lite version, you can get it from the WordPress.org directory for free.
Simply go ahead and download the desired plugin on your system. Now let’s begin the installation process.
Log into your WordPress website and then navigate to Plugins, and choose Add New.
Click on the Upload plugin option on the top right corner and select the .zip file from your system. Click on the Install Now button.
Once the installation is done, activate the plugin to finish the installation.
How to use User Activity Log Pro?
Once you have the plugin installed and activated, you can begin using the User Activity Log widget right away.
For this, go to your WordPress Dashboard and then click on the User Activity Log option on the left.
Here you can see all the recent activities on your website. Every entry will have a single row, and you can change the number of logs per page using the screen options on the top right corner of the screen.
For each entry, you can see the date and time when the entry is recorded. You can also see the IP address and the type of change and the action they have taken while they were logged in.
Plugin Features
Although this plugin is loaded with features and great options we decided to list down the most prominent features of this plugin.
Let’s see each feature in detail and learn more about the User Activity Log plugin.
Record and Display the Activities
Well, this feature is the most certain to be on this list. The main USP of the plugin is recording and displaying the activities of all the users. You can see all the details of the actions done by the user in a single list of actions.
You can see the role or the author of the activity and the IP address of the network they made the change from. Further, you can also see the country of the user that made the change.
Exporting CSV file
This plugin does not limit the usage just to the website, but rather it allows you to export the entries in a CSV file. You can filter the entries as per your needs and then export the filtered entries by simply clicking on the export logs (CSV) button.
This feature gives you the liberty to make full use of the data of the records. You can see which user is most active, which user did any comments related activity or which user made the WordPress setting related changes.
Favourite / Unfavourite Log
User Activity Log allows you to favorite or unfavourite an entry and the log details. With this feature, you can mark the important activity logs.
These favorited logs or activities can later be viewed easily by the filter of favorite/unfavourite in the list, and this data too can be exported for further processing.
Filtering Option
Since there are lots of actions a user makes when they log into their WordPress account, it sometimes becomes difficult to look for the details that you want. For this, filtering acts as a great time and effort saver.
To use the filter, you can simply select the filter from the top of the list. There are multiple filters, and you can get your results by the following parameters –
- Time – Filter data to display the data by the period, for example, today, this month, last 6 months, etc.
- Roles – You can further filter your data based on who made those changes based on the WordPress user roles
- Users – If you want to see the activity of a specific user, you can check it out from the Users list. Just select the user and click on the apply filter button.
- IP address – If you wish to go one step further, you can select the IP address of the network that you want the see the data of and click on the filter button, and the data of all actions taken by that specific machine will be displayed.
- Countries – This parameter can be useful if you have a team or users accessing the backend of the website from all over the World or from multiple countries.
- Types – The types allows you to change the activity and allows you to look into a specific activity of your choice.
- Hooks – If you want to take your filtration one step further you can filter the data by hooks a well.
- Favorites – If you have your logs set as favorited by clicking on the star button at the end of the row, you can filter them from the list.
The best part of all this is that you can use the above filters in combination as well.
For example, if you want to display the last 30 days logs of all the admins from the United States around WooCommerce, you can easily do that by using all the 4 filters in combination.
Sorting Option
Sorting allows you to filter all your listings by a specific parameter. These parameters can be a date, author, IP Address, Country, Hook, type, etc.
Email Notifications
If you want to keep a closer eye at some of your users, you can enable email notifications from the settings, and that will enable sending email notifications whenever that user makes any change or perform any activity.
Password Security
Password security can be really handy if you want to keep your data intact. With the password security, you can set your data records to be only deleted when you enter the password else the entries can’t be deleted.
Currently Logged in users
You can see who is currently logged in using the dashboard of the User Activity Log Pro and can make them sign out as well to end their session.
Role Manager
You can restrict who can see the User Activity Log as well. If you wish to limit this data just to the administrators, you can do that from the settings page of your WordPress website. There is a Role Manager tab under the settings page, and you can assign that stuff to a contributor, editor, or one of your website custom role.
Loads of plugins supported
Since User Activity Log is now growing at a significant growth, it is much needed that the plugin is able to run seamlessly with other plugins. Apart from these plugins, you can add your plugin support with the help of the custom event log feature.
Here is a list of all the supported plugins –
- WooCommerce
- Easy Digital Download
- bbPress
- Advanced Custom Field (ACF)
- Contact Form 7
- Gravity Form
- Yoast SEO
- Wordfence
- Blog Designer PRO
- Autoptimize
- All in One Reservation
- Portfolio Designer
- User Switching
- Users Ultra
- WC Checkout Fields Editor
User-Friendly Admin Panel
One of the most important requirements of the WordPress backend is it should be user-friendly and here the user-friendliness is on the spot. Does not matter if you are a professional WordPress developer or if you are just a business owner and beginning to understand how WordPress works, you will be able to get along with the easy interface without any problem.
Custom Event Log
While the current hooks and trackers are enough to track almost any activity but if you wish to take your trackings further, you can easily do it. The plugin already comes with the support for adding a custom log.
With these arguments, you can add a custom event log to track your custom events/actions:
- Event Name (Hook Name)
- Event Label
- Event Type
- Event Description
You can add as many hooks you want. You can even add thousands of event hooks and can keep track of everyone.
Translation Ready
The User Activity Log Pro is translation ready. The plugin follows the WordPress I18n standards, and it can easily be translated into any language from English. It comes with .pot files for easy and quick translation.
Customer Support
The customer support of this plugin is provided by the amazing team of Solwin Infotech which has proved to be impeccable when it comes to resolving queries. With a plugin as good as User Activity Pro, you won’t even get into any problem, but in case you face any issue, you will be in really good hands.
Log Reset Option
If you wish to reset all the logs in your dashboard, then you can do that too with the “Delete Log Activities” option. Doing this will remove all your activities data with a download and email option.
User Details Tracking
The tracking is not limited just to the post, plugin changes. You can keep track of other activities too such as the user’s own details. Whenever a user changes any detail in their own profile such as first name, second name, website link, email, etc., it can create an impact on the website. For this, User Activity Log Pro will give you all the activity details of the users regarding their profile changes as well.
Plans and Pricing
The User Activity Log plugin is surely a great plugin, and it has a lot to offer, but it is not necessary that it will come with a huge price tag.
The User Activity Log plugin comes in two variations, lite, and pro($69).
Lite version
It offers features such as tracking, favoriting, sorting, filtering, etc. This plugin is available for free to download from the WordPress.org repository.
Check out more details about the lite version here.
There are no hidden fees involved at all, and you can install the plugin directly, but the lite version might lack some features which you will get in the pro version.
Pro Version
The pro version of the plugin is for the administrators and website owners who want to take full control of their WordPress website. You will get all the features and functionalities of the plugin without anything holding you back.
Check out all the details of the Pro version here.
From advanced filtering to delete logs option, you will get it all. For the pro version, you will get detailed documentation as well which will help you in making the most out of the User activity log pro.
Conclusion
Having a good plugin which will tell you all the actions of your users is a must if you are running a blogs website and have multiple users handling the backend. Even if you are running a website with fewer users, it is wise to get this plugin now rather than having a hard time tracing the source of an error later on.
You can get this plugin now using the links mentioned above, and I would strongly recommend you going with this plugin. You can start with the free version and when you feel confident to use this plugin, upgrade to the pro version easily by purchasing it later on.
However, what are your thoughts on this? Have you used this plugin before and what do you think was the experience?
Which feature you liked the most and what additional feature you would like to see in the upcoming updates? Comment it down below!
