If you run a multi user WordPress website it is important to keep track of user activity. An uncontrolled user access to your site could be dangerous. Limiting user access is built in to WordPress with various roles. Now, WP Stream brings you the power to monitor each user’s activity.

WP Stream tracks each and every action of all the logged in users on your site. Be it publishing a post, or saving it as draft. Stream can also track plugin/theme activation/deactivation and several other changes.

Stream is one of the easiest and safest tracking tool that provides you record of specific activities performed by logged-in users in the backend. The plugin prepares relevant reports in the database. These reports help administrator to see what’s happening on their site.

Features of Stream

• Live stream updates of user activity records.
• Limit who can view user activity records by user role.
• Private RSS and JSON feeds of user activity records.
• Dashboard  widget of most recent user activity.

In this article we’ll show you how to monitor registered user and logged in user activity using the powerful Stream plugin.

How to monitor user activity with Stream?

Stream is available in both free and premium version. In this tutorial we will discuss about free version.

Step 1: Install Stream

You can find stream on WordPress plugin repository. Install and activate the plugin. You can also check our previous guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.

Once you’ll install and activate the plugin you’ll see the screen like below screenshot:

Step 2: Connect to Stream

Now click on Connect to Stream button. This will connect plugin with your WordPress.com ID that helps you to see changes made on your site.

After logging into to your WordPress.com account, you’ll two options where it will ask you for free or premium version. Select your version and go forward. Once you’ll select your version, you’ll see the result like this:

Accept all terms and conditions and click on Subscribe Free button. Now you’ll see Stream menu in your WordPress admin area like this:

Step 3: Stream

In this section you’ll see all the records of user activity with the detail of user who has done these activities like this:

As you can see in above screenshot there are 5 options at the top of list. Using these option you can change the time and set it with that time whose records you want to see. You can also select the authors, contents, actions and filter all the records according your need.

Step 4: Settings

General

• Role Access: In this section you can select users from the given list of roles who can see Stream records. But the settings can be accessed by site administrator only.
• Private Feeds: If you enable this option then users who have selected to see the records will be given a private key which is used to access the Stream record securely.

Exclude

In this section you can create your rules which excludes certain records appearing in the Stream.

Once you’re done with all the settings click on Save changes button.

Other Options

• Account: In this section you’ll see all the details of your Stream account.
• Notification: This feature is available with pro version only. Every time any changes made in site, the plugin will notify the admin of the website who access the settings of Stream plugin.
• Reports: This feature is also available with pro version. The plugin will visual stream report and share it with your stakehokders.

Now you’re done. You can easily see all the stream records by clicking on Stream option.

If you want some advanced features you can upgrade to pro version of the plugin. The main features of pro version of Stream plugin are:

• Sends notification to admin on every change made on the site.
• Generate Stream Report.
• Advanced Security.

Stream is one of our favorite WordPress plugins and yes, we use it!