In the same vein that you need to have complete knowledge and control of your property, you must equally need to be knowledgeable to any activity changes in your WordPress blog property. Not being too suspicious about it, but monitoring changes is primarily required for security purposes especially in the Internet that is swamped with unscrupulous individuals. Monitoring activities also serves as basis for improvement as it allows you discover weaknesses or issues that may need debugging for the overall objective of maintaining integrity of your content or provide support to your members and viewers. But how exactly do we conduct the monitor? Here are the simple ways to do it.
Install and Activate Activity Log
Like most other functionalities and features of WordPress, the monitoring function is also provided by a plugin. Hence, the first step to achieve this is by installing and activating an activity monitoring plugin which are often free and accessible in the WordPress.org directory via the dashboard. Once you have downloaded it, you should configure the plugin that usually achieved through a configuration wizard or settings. Setting configuration included days of storing changes and putting email notification for changes, among many others. Once you have activated and configured the plugin, you now start viewing your activity log and monitor the changes that occur in your WordPress blog account.
Top Plugins to Help Monitor Word Press Activity
Since the best way to monitor Word Press activity is by using plugins, the features and services of your plugin will essentially determine how inordinate or limited your monitoring activities can be. In line with this, we also included the top plugins you can use to monitor activity logs plus brief descriptions of their advantageous features.
WP Security Audit Log. You cannot get wrong in using this plugin for activity monitoring with over 70,000 users across the world. Aside from being user friendly, this plugin focuses on the security aspect of monitoring activities. Its premium version gives you access to important security aspects such as user session management as well as added features like Search functions, report generation and ability to store data in an external database to prevent speed reduction.
Simple History. Aside from providing the basic function of monitoring plug-ins, this has the unique feature of allowing you to compare differences between two versions of a single post. It also supports other plugins involved in user switching and restricting login attempts as well as downloading RSS feed.
Stream. This typical WordPress Monitoring plugin that provides activity tracking for other important plugins like Easy Digital Downloads, user switching, JetPack, and Gravity Forms is ideal for people managing and monitoring numerous sites.
What changes should you monitor?
One way to best monitor changes in your WordPress activity is to know what types of changes you should focus on monitoring. Topping the list of things to monitor is changes in content. More particularly, this refers to the actual posts in the site, because information is primarily the purpose of a blog on the first place. Secondly, log in attempts and remove users because you need to know who are using and viewing your blog. Finally, you should monitor any changes with your theme or plugins which occurs without your permission because, primarily, this is a threat to your security and privacy.
