Description
Beziworld – Activity Log records what users do on your WordPress site: who logged in, who failed to log in, who changed a role, who edited their profile, who created or edited content, and more. The focus is user activity, and the goal is to make the capabilities competing plugins reserve for paid upgrades available for free.
Designed for performance. Events are stored in a dedicated, indexed custom table (never in wp_posts), written in batches to keep request overhead low, while security-relevant events are persisted immediately. Retention pruning keeps the table lean automatically.
Designed for trust. Each event is signed with a per-site HMAC and sealed into a hash-chained sequence of checkpoints, making after-the-fact tampering, including row insertion or deletion, detectable. Because an attacker with full server access could recompute local signatures, the latest checkpoint signature can be anchored off-host (emailed or sent to a webhook) so the integrity proof leaves the machine.
Designed for privacy. IP logging is optional and can be anonymised at capture time. The log takes part in Tools > Export Personal Data and Tools > Erase Personal Data, and the plugin suggests a privacy policy paragraph. It never phones home and never loads code from external servers.
Designed for your security stack. New events can be streamed as signed JSON Lines or syslog-compatible JSON to any HTTPS endpoint that accepts newline-delimited JSON, typically a collector such as Vector, Fluent Bit or Logstash that forwards to Elastic, Splunk, Loki or Datadog, with retries that never lose an event.
Highlights
- Authentication and account activity: logins, logouts, failed logins (rate-limited to prevent log flooding), registration, role changes, profile and user-metadata changes, password resets, application passwords, user deletion.
- Content activity: posts, pages and custom post types created, updated (with a field-level diff), status changes, trashing, restoring and permanent deletion; comments, media and taxonomy terms.
- Clean, readable event viewer with severity badges, expandable detail rows, sorting, filtering and full-text search.
- Granular configuration: enable or disable whole event groups or individual events.
- Exclusion rules by IP/CIDR, user login, user ID, role and request path.
- Plugin/theme and settings changes, navigation menus, and the GDPR personal-data request lifecycle.
- Optional integrations: WooCommerce (orders, status changes, stock) and Yoast SEO (metadata and settings).
- Real-time notifications, Slack, Discord, Telegram, email and generic webhook, by urgency or chosen event codes, delivered immediately or as an hourly digest. Free.
- Optional login geolocation (via a provider you wire) with an automatic alert on a login from a new country.
- Scheduled HTML summary reports emailed to the administrator (daily or weekly).
- Statistics screen with daily-volume chart and category, user and event breakdowns.
- Active session management: see who is logged in and terminate sessions. Free.
- Tamper-evident integrity: per-row HMAC plus a hash-chained checkpoint sequence with optional off-host anchoring (email/webhook), verifiable with WP-CLI (
wp bzal verify-integrity). - Real-time notifications also fire on a chosen set of event codes, regardless of urgency.
- Configurable severity per event code, driving notifications and the security badge.
- Optional anomaly detection: flags a rapid bulk-delete burst by one user and off-hours admin logins as high-severity alerts.
- Admin-bar quick view: the latest events and a 24-hour security badge on every screen.
- “Users online” view: who currently holds a session, with their most recent action, time and IP.
- CSV, JSON and JSON Lines export of the filtered log, streamed page by page so large logs export quickly, with spreadsheet-formula-injection protection.
- Log stream (SIEM export): new events are sent to your HTTPS endpoint (for example a Vector, Fluent Bit or Logstash HTTP input) in batches signed with HMAC-SHA256, with exponential backoff, a delivery status screen, a “Test connection” button and an alert event when delivery keeps failing.
- GDPR tools: the person’s log entries are included in personal data exports; erasure requests either keep entries for the retention period (with an explanation for the requester) or anonymise them while the integrity chain stays verifiable.
- Self-audit: changes to the plugin’s own settings, retention runs, anonymisation and stream failures are always recorded and cannot be switched off or excluded.
- WooCommerce: refunds, trashed and deleted orders (HPOS and legacy storage), price, sale date, SKU and visibility changes with old and new values, and changes made on the WooCommerce settings screens (secrets are never logged).
- Role capability changes (a capability granted to or revoked from a role) are recorded as security events.
- Read access via the REST API (offset and cursor pagination, plus an integrity-anchor endpoint) and optionally GraphQL, gated by capability.
- Granular configuration: enable/disable whole event groups or individual events; exclusion rules by IP/CIDR, user, role and path.
- Configurable retention with on-demand cleanup that keeps integrity verification intact; UTC storage with display in your chosen timezone.
- Multisite ready: one shared, indexed table for the whole network, partitioned per site, with per-site settings, retention and integrity chain.
- Fully translatable, with bundled Polish, German and Czech translations.
External services
This plugin works fully offline. It does not connect to any external service on its own. The following optional integrations are disabled by default and only ever contact a destination that you enter in the settings; each transmits a short summary of a logged event (such as the event description, the acting user’s login, the time, and, when IP logging is enabled, the IP address) at the moment the event occurs or, in digest mode, once per hour.
- Slack: when you enter a Slack Incoming Webhook URL, matching events are POSTed to that webhook. See the Slack Terms of Service (https://slack.com/terms-of-service) and Privacy Policy (https://slack.com/trust/privacy/privacy-policy).
- Discord: when you enter a Discord webhook URL, matching events are POSTed to that webhook. See the Discord Terms (https://discord.com/terms) and Privacy Policy (https://discord.com/privacy).
- Telegram: when you enter a Telegram bot token and chat ID, matching events are sent through the Telegram Bot API at api.telegram.org. See the Telegram Terms (https://telegram.org/tos) and Privacy Policy (https://telegram.org/privacy).
- Generic webhook: when you enter a custom webhook URL (for notifications or for off-host integrity anchoring), the corresponding payload is POSTed to that URL. The destination is yours; review its provider’s terms and privacy policy.
- Log stream (SIEM export): when you enable the log stream and enter an HTTPS endpoint, every new event (including the acting user’s login and, when IP logging is enabled, the IP address and browser identification) is POSTed to that endpoint in batches every fifteen minutes. The destination is a system you choose and operate or subscribe to; review its provider’s terms and privacy policy.
- Login geolocation: disabled unless you both enable it and wire a provider through the
bzal_geolocate_countryfilter. The plugin bundles no geolocation provider and makes no geolocation request by itself; any lookup is performed by the provider you supply, under that provider’s terms.
Summary reports and notification emails are delivered through your site’s own WordPress mail system to the recipients you configure; they are not sent to any third party by this plugin.
Screenshots
Installation
- Upload the
beziworld-activity-logfolder to/wp-content/plugins/. - Activate the plugin through the Plugins screen in WordPress.
- Open Activity Log in the admin menu to review events, and Activity Log Settings to configure retention, events and exclusions.
FAQ
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Where are events stored?
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In dedicated custom database tables created on activation, not in the WordPress posts table, so your content queries are never affected.
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Will it slow down my site?
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Non-critical events are buffered and written in a single batched query on shutdown; security events are written immediately. Indexed columns keep the viewer responsive even on large logs.
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Does the plugin detect changes made directly in the database?
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No. Like every hook-based activity logger, it records actions that flow through WordPress. Direct SQL modifications bypass WordPress hooks and cannot be observed.
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Does it send my data anywhere?
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No. There is no tracking or telemetry, and the plugin never loads code from external servers. The only outbound requests are the optional integrations described under “External services” below: every one is off by default and is sent only to an endpoint you configure yourself.
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How do I verify the signature of streamed events?
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Every request carries
X-Bzal-Timestamp(Unix time) andX-Bzal-Signature: sha256=<hex>, where the hex value is HMAC-SHA256 of the timestamp, a dot and the raw request body, keyed with the signing secret shown on the Log stream tab. Recompute it, compare in constant time and reject requests older than a few minutes. Each event line also carries the row’s own integrity signature (hmac). -
What happens to the log when someone asks to be forgotten?
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By default the entries are kept for the retention period as security records, which is usually covered by legitimate interest, and the erasure request reports this to the requester. If you choose to anonymise instead, the user name, IP address, browser details and identifying values are removed from that person’s entries. The rows are re-signed and their original signatures kept, so
wp bzal verify-integritystill passes, and the anonymisation itself is recorded. -
Does retention break integrity verification?
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No. Before removing old events the plugin seals them into a checkpoint and records where the chain was cut, so verification covers everything that remains and still detects any other change or deletion.
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Does it provide WP-CLI commands?
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Yes:
wp bzal verify-integrity: verify the per-row signatures and the checkpoint chain, reporting any detected tampering.wp bzal checkpoint: seal a new integrity checkpoint immediately.wp bzal purge: apply the retention policy now.wp bzal stats: print the number of recorded events for the current site.wp bzal stream status|flush|reset [--from=<id>]: inspect the log stream, deliver pending events now, or move the delivery cursor (--from=0replays the whole log).
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Can developers extend it?
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Yes. The plugin exposes hooks for integration:
do_action( 'bzal_event_logged', array $columns ): fires after each event is stored; receives the event’s column map, for forwarding to your own systems.apply_filters( 'bzal_geolocate_country', string $country, string $ip ), return an ISO country code for an IP to power optional login geolocation (no provider is bundled).apply_filters( 'bzal_user_meta_denied', bool $denied, string $meta_key ), return true to keep a specific user-meta key out of the log.do_action( 'bzal_plugin_booted' ): fires once the plugin has finished booting, for registering your own extensions.apply_filters( 'bzal_export_max_rows', int $max_rows ): the maximum number of rows in one CSV, JSON or JSON Lines export (default 100000).do_action( 'bzal_schema_upgraded', string $from ): fires after the plugin’s database schema was installed or upgraded on a site.
Reviews
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Contributors & Developers
“Beziworld – Activity Log” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
“Beziworld – Activity Log” has been translated into 1 locale. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Translate “Beziworld – Activity Log” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.1.0
- New: a redesigned admin interface shared by all Beziworld plugins: a header with the plugin version and a dark, light or automatic theme, tabs between the Events, Settings, Sessions, Online, Statistics and About screens, and the settings sections in a vertical menu next to their content. The sidebar keeps a single “Activity Log” entry; every screen stays at its address.
- New: “Send test notification” and a delivery status table (last attempt, HTTP code, error) for every notification channel.
- New: Screen Options for the number of events per page, an IP address filter, events grouped by category in the filter, and a “Clear filters” link when the filters match nothing.
- New: exporting the log is recorded as an event (format, filters, whether IP addresses were included). The event cannot be disabled.
- Fixed: date filters, exports and the daily chart compared local dates with UTC times, which added or dropped events at the edges of a day. Dates now follow the configured timezone, including daylight saving changes.
- Fixed: the hourly digest only reached email; it is now delivered to every enabled channel, and events queued for it by simultaneous requests are no longer lost.
- Fixed: IP addresses follow one rule everywhere (list, Online screen, search, exports, REST and GraphQL): only users who manage the log see them. Filter bzal_can_see_ip.
- Fixed: sorting by user sorts by login name.
- Improved: notifications are sent with wp_safe_remote_post; saved webhook URLs and the Telegram token are masked in the settings form and kept until a new value is entered.
- Improved: the Sessions screen is paginated, asks for confirmation before ending all sessions (with a clear warning for your own account) and shows dates in the configured timezone.
- Improved: event details are readable without JavaScript, and the details toggle has an accessible name and aria-controls.
- Tested up to WordPress 7.1.
1.0.0
- New: Log stream (SIEM export). New events are delivered to an HTTPS endpoint as JSON Lines or syslog-compatible JSON, in batches signed with HMAC-SHA256 (timestamp plus body), every fifteen minutes through WP-Cron. Delivery is cursor based: nothing is lost when the endpoint is down, failed batches are retried with exponential backoff, and repeated failures are recorded as an event. Includes a delivery status screen, a “Test connection” button and
wp bzal stream. - New: JSON Lines export of the filtered log. All exports now page by id instead of by offset, so the cost of each page stays constant and large exports no longer slow down as they progress (in testing, an export that took 32 seconds over 100,000 events by offset runs in under a second).
- New: personal data exporter and eraser for Tools > Export / Erase Personal Data, a choice between keeping entries for the retention period or anonymising them, and a suggested privacy policy paragraph.
- New: the plugin records changes to its own settings, retention runs, anonymisation and stream failures. These events cannot be disabled or excluded.
- New: role capability changes, WooCommerce refunds, trashed and deleted orders (HPOS and legacy), product price, sale date, SKU, tax and visibility changes, and WooCommerce settings changes (secret values redacted).
- Fixed: retention made integrity verification report tampering once old events were removed. Retention now seals and records the cut; installs pruned by earlier versions are reconciled once on upgrade.
- Fixed: on multisite, sites other than the main site wrote to tables that did not exist until an administrator visited that site, the network-wide storage was split per site, and site administrators did not receive the log capabilities. All sites now share one network table (existing per-site tables are kept) and capabilities are granted per site.
- Fixed: full-text search matched any of the words instead of all of them, and every search also scanned the unindexed IP column. Searches now require every word and only look at IP addresses when the term can be part of one.
- Fixed: search failed on databases that accept a FULLTEXT index but cannot run MATCH (such as the SQLite integration used by WordPress Playground); the plugin now checks MATCH works before using it.
- Fixed: HPOS placeholder posts were logged as created content and WooCommerce order notes as comments; WooCommerce housekeeping user meta and role meta under a custom table prefix were logged as user metadata changes.
- Hardening: notification and anchoring webhooks use the request-time safe HTTP API, which refuses hostnames resolving to internal addresses; CSV cells starting with a tab or carriage return are neutralised.
- Developer: automated PHPUnit integration tests and a GitHub Actions workflow (coding standards, PHP 7.4+ compatibility, tests on PHP 7.4 to 8.4, Plugin Check).
- Tested up to WordPress 7.1.
0.6.0
- New: an “About the author” screen under Activity Log with the author’s details, a link to the plugin page and an optional, voluntary way to support development. It is also linked from the plugin’s row on the Plugins screen. Nothing is shown unless you open it.
- Changed: the plugin is now named “Beziworld – Activity Log” and links to its page on beziworld.eu. The plugin folder, slug, text domain, settings and data are unchanged.
- Improved: plugin texts and translations use plain punctuation instead of typographic dashes.
- Tested up to WordPress 7.1.
0.5.1
- Hardening: settings inputs are now unslashed and sanitised at the point of access rather than across helper boundaries, satisfying Plugin Check static analysis.
- Removed the redundant
load_plugin_textdomain()call; bundled Polish, German and Czech translations load through WordPress just-in-time loading (theText DomainandDomain Pathheaders are declared).
0.5.0
- Content, comment, media, taxonomy, menu, plugin/theme, settings, GDPR-request and user-metadata sensors.
- WooCommerce and Yoast SEO integrations (loaded only when active).
- Real-time notifications: Slack, Discord, Telegram, email, generic webhook, by urgency or per chosen event codes; immediate or hourly digest.
- Optional login geolocation with a login-from-new-country alert.
- Scheduled HTML summary reports; statistics screen with charts; admin-bar quick view with a security badge.
- Active session management; CSV/JSON export with formula-injection protection.
- Hash-chained integrity checkpoints with optional off-host anchoring and
wp bzal verify-integrity; per-site partitioned on multisite networks. - REST (offset + cursor pagination + integrity-anchor endpoint) and optional GraphQL read access; advanced filters; dashboard widget; same-request event correlation.
- Per-site partitioned integrity chain on multisite; optional full-text indexing of the event-data payload.
- Configurable per-event severity and optional behavioural anomaly detection (bulk-delete burst, off-hours admin login).
- Fast full-text search (MySQL FULLTEXT) across event object, user and message columns, with a LIKE fallback and an optional mode that also indexes the event-data payload.
0.1.0
- Initial release: custom-table storage, per-row HMAC integrity, authentication/account sensor, event viewer, configurable retention with on-demand cleanup, event toggles and exclusion rules.