Optimize WordPress Monitoring and Tracking with Stream Plugin

Note: This post was first published on the Jan 29, 2014.

WordPress offers all the essential tools to build and manage your website independently. However, as your website and business grow, you may need to hire a team to assist in managing and expanding your site. Some of these team members will require access to your site’s backend (WP-Admin).

As your team expands, it can become challenging to monitor who is doing what on the site. To maintain control, you’ll need an effective tracking tool to keep an eye on your team’s activities. While several WordPress plugins offer tracking capabilities, none match the effectiveness and user experience of Stream.

How to Use Stream

Stream is a powerful plugin that tracks almost every change made on your WordPress site. It records activities across Posts, Pages, Themes, Plugins, and Custom Post Types, including actions such as post/page creation, updates, deletions, and plugin/theme activations or deactivations.

Once activated, Stream adds a new side-menu in your dashboard called Stream, where all logged activities are stored.

As shown in the screenshot above, Stream provides detailed logs of activities, even logging invalid login attempts. You can filter logs by Author, Connector (the area where the activity occurs), Context (the specific item affected), and Actions.

In the Settings page, you can configure how long to retain the logs. You can also specify User Roles to determine who has access to view these logs.

Using the Activity Feed

Stream allows you to access logs via an RSS Feed. By enabling the Private Feed option under the Settings page, you can view your site’s activity logs through Feed reader applications like Reeder or ReadKit. This feature lets you stay updated on your website’s activities without needing to log in.

To set this up, enable the Private Feed option, go to Your Profile, and find the Feed URL with the private key. Add this URL to your preferred Feed reader app.

Future Features to Watch For

Stream is actively being developed, with many new features expected in future updates. These may include Live Updates for real-time activity tracking, monitoring of WordPress Core Updates, and support for WordPress Multisite.