How to Monitor User Activity in WordPress with Simple History

Monitoring user activity on your WordPress site is crucial for security, troubleshooting issues quicker, and maintaining oversight of your team‘s actions. In this 2023 updated guide, I will show you how to easily track WordPress user activity with the Simple History plugin.

Why Monitor WordPress User Activity

Here are some key reasons for monitoring user activity in WordPress:

• Security: Identify suspicious behavior like repeated failed login attempts, plugin/theme changes, spam approvals etc.
• Accountability: Keep your team and contractors in check by tracking their edits and actions.
• Troubleshooting: If your site breaks suddenly, the audit log helps pinpoint what change caused issues.
• Insights: Understand how users interact with your site and identify areas needing improvement.

Installing and Configuring Simple History

Simple History is a lightweight free plugin that provides basic WordPress activity logging.

Installation

To install Simple History:

1. Go to Plugins > Add New in your WP admin.
2. Search for Simple History and click Install Now.
3. After installation finishes, click Activate.

Configuration

After activating Simple History:

1. Go to Settings > Simple History
2. Adjust the settings:
   • Dashboard log items – Number of log items visible in dashboard
   • On separate log page – Items per page on the log viewer
   • Remove history older than – Automatically clear logs older than the set time period
3. Click Save Changes to update settings.

Viewing Simple History Logs

To view user activity logs in Simple History:

1. Go to Dashboard > Simple History
2. You will see latest user activity items showing important details like:
   • Date & time
   • Username
   • Event description (plugin updated, content edited etc.)

Searching Logs

To search for specific events or users:

1. Click on Show search options
2. Fill in one or more fields like Username, Event type etc.
3. Click Search events.
4. Only matching activity log items will display.

This allows digging deeper into the logs for security analysis, troubleshooting site issues, reviewing team productivity etc.

Enabling Important Event Logging

By default Simple History tracks common events like:

• User logins
• Content changes
• Plugin/theme changes
• Media uploads

You can toggle logging for specific event types under Settings > Simple History > Enable/Disable Modules.

Some important events you should enable:

• Failed login attempts
• Plugin activations/deactivations
• Theme changes
• WordPress core updates

This ensures you capture events that are critical for WordPress security and site integrity.

Conclusion

I hope this guide was helpful in showing you how to monitor WordPress user activity with Simple History. Key takeaways:

• Audit logs help identify security threats, troubleshoot issues faster and maintain oversight.
• Simple History provides basic activity logging for free.
• View logs under Dashboard > Simple History.
• Search logs for specific events or users.
• Customize tracked event types under settings.

Let me know if you have any other questions in the comments!