AI Bot Monitor

FAQ

Where are logs stored?

In your WordPress uploads directory: /uploads/ai-bot-monitor/, one CSV per day (log-YYYY-MM-DD.csv).

How does the AI-Layer overview work?

It scans today’s user agents for well-known retrieval/crawler signatures (e.g. Chrome/141, GPTBot, CCBot, PerplexityBot) and counts hits.

Can I exclude my own IPs?

Yes. Add to your theme or a small plugin:
add_filter(‘ai_bot_monitor_ip_whitelist’, fn($w)=>array_merge($w, [‘123.123.123.123’]));

Does it impact performance?

Minimal. The plugin writes lightweight, line-based logs and skips admin, AJAX, and cron requests.
Key Features

Automatic MU-Plugin Migration – activates once, moves itself to /mu-plugins/ for guaranteed uptime

AI Crawler Detection – GPTBot, Claude, Perplexity, Copilot, CCBot, Applebot, and 40 + more

Daily CSV Logging – per-day files auto-rotated (30-day retention)

Dashboard Overview – live stats with AI-layer grouping (e.g. Chrome/141 for ChatGPT)

ZIP Export – one-click archive download for all logs

Lightweight – no external calls, no database writes, pure file-based logging

Privacy-safe – no user tracking, only bot metadata

⚙️ How It Works

Upload ai-bot-monitor.zip through Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.

Activate the plugin.

On activation, it:

Creates /wp-content/mu-plugins/ai-bot-monitor-loader.php

Deactivates the normal plugin copy

Loads itself once via MU-plugin

Visit Dashboard → AI Bot Monitor to view daily logs.

If filesystem permissions block MU-loader creation, the plugin continues as a normal plugin until permissions allow migration.

📊 Dashboard Overview

The dashboard groups detected crawlers by signature, including:

Signature Description
GPTBot OpenAI crawler
Chrome/141 ChatGPT / Copilot retrieval layer
Chrome/134 Perplexity / Bing AI layer
Claude Anthropic web/app crawler
CCBot Common Crawl (training datasets)
Googlebot, Bingbot Search engine crawlers
Bytespider TikTok / ByteDance crawler

You can export all logs anytime with “Download All Logs (ZIP)”.

🗂 Log Storage

Logs are written to
/wp-content/uploads/ai-bot-monitor/log-YYYY-MM-DD.csv

Each entry includes:

time, ip, user_agent, url

Old files older than 30 days are automatically deleted.

🔒 Security & Performance

Runs on init hook with early priority 0

Doesn’t touch the database

Compatible with caching and static HTML plugins

Does not expose data publicly

Only administrators can access the dashboard and export

🪶 Changelog
1.4

Complete rewrite with auto-migration to MU-plugin

Prevented double-load across plugin/MU contexts

Added success notice after migration

Hardened Zip export (ZIP extension check)

Code cleanup for WordPress.org submission compliance

1.3 → 1.4 migration note

If a previous version exists, the new installer will safely create the MU-loader and deactivate the old instance automatically.

📜 License

This plugin is open-source and distributed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
You are free to use, modify, and redistribute under the same license.