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Simple History shows recent changes made within WordPress, directly on your dashboard or on a separate page.

The plugin works as a log/history/audit log/version history of the most important events that occur in WordPress.

Out of the box Simple History has support for:

• Posts and pages
  see who added, updated or deleted a post or page
• Attachments
  see who added, updated or deleted an attachment
• Comments
  see who edited, approved or removed a comment
• Widgets
  get info when someone adds, updates or removes a widget in a sidebar
• Plugins
  activation and deactivation
• User profiles
  info about added, updated or removed users
• User logins
  see when a user login & logut
• Failed user logins
  see when someone has tried to log in, but failed. The log will then include ip address of the possible hacker.
• bbPress
  view changes to forums and topics and view user changes
• Gravity Forms
  see who created, edited or deleted a form, field, or entry

With it's easy to use Extender system, developers can add their own settings and items to track.

There is also a RSS feed of changes available, so you can keep track of the changes made via your favorite RSS reader on your phone, on your iPad, or on your computer.

It’s a plugin that is good to have on websites where several people are involved in editing the content.

Example scenarios

Keep track of what other people are doing: "Has someone done anything today? Ah, Sarah uploaded the new press release and created an article for it. Great! Now I don't have to do that."

Or for debug purposes: "The site feels very slow since yesterday. Has anyone done anything special? ... Ah, Steven activated 'naughy-plugin-x', that must be it."

See it in action

See the plugin in action with this short screencast:

Add your own events to simple history

If you are a plugin developer and would like to add your own things/events to Simple History you can do that by calling the function simple_history_add like this:

<?php

# Check that function exists before trying to use it
# Just in case someone disabled the history plugin or similar
if (function_exists("simple_history_add")) {

    # Log that an email has been sent
    simple_history_add(array(
        "object_type" => "Email",
        "object_name" => "Hi there",
        "action" => "was sent"
    ));

    # Will show “Plugin your_plugin_name Edited” in the history log
    simple_history_add("action=edited&object_type=plugin&object_name=your_plugin_name");
    
    # Will show the history item "Starship USS Enterprise repaired"
    simple_history_add("action=repaired&object_type=Starship&object_name=USS Enterprise");

    # Log with some extra details about the email
    simple_history_add(array(
        "object_type" => "Email",
        "object_name" => "Hi there",
        "action" => "was sent",
        "description" => "The database query to generate the email took .3 seconds. This is email number 4 that is sent to this user"
    ));

?>

Add support for your own custom events

There's also a simple class that you can extend to add support for custom history items. It's super simple to use! Take a look at class.simple-history-extend.php to get started, and then extending Simple_History_Extend and fill the required methods with their events and log messages.

Never clear the history

By default the items in the history log is cleared automatically afer 60 days. You can override this behaviour by using a filter, like this:

<?php
// Never clear the database
add_action("simple_history_allow_db_purge", function($bool) {
    return false;
});
?>

Filters

Available filters if you want to modify any behavior

• simple_history_rss_item_title
• simple_history_view_history_capability
• simple_history_show_settings_page
• simple_history_rss_item_description
• simple_history_rss_item_title
• simple_history_show_on_dashboard
• simple_history_show_as_page
• simple_history_allow_db_purge
• simple_history_db_purge_days_interval

Translations/Languages

This plugin is available in the following languages:

• English
• German
• Simplified Chinese
• Swedish
• French
• Arabic

Lots of thanks to the translators!

Contribute at GitHub

Development of this plugin takes place at GitHub. Please join in with feature requests, bug reports, or even pull requests! https://github.com/bonny/WordPress-Simple-History

Donation and more plugins

• If you like this plugin don't forget to donate to support further development.
• More WordPress CMS plugins by the same author.