Simple History shows recent changes made within WordPress, directly on your dashboard or on a separate page. By using this plugin you can among many things see when a post has been edited, a user was created or when an attachment was uploaded. On sites with multiple authors this is a very useful plugin.
Simple History Features
- See when and what page, post or custom post type that have been created, modified or deleted
- See when an attachments have been uploaded, modified or deleted
- See when a plugin have been activated or deactivated
- Search the history to find anything
- Choose to show the history log on the dashboard or on a separate page
- A secret RSS feed of the tracked history is available that you can subscribe to
- 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.
Screenshots
Objects Simple History tracks in WordPress
Here’s a list of the tings that Simple History keeps track of in WordPress:
- Settings pages changes
- Pages, posts and custom post types – added, deleted
- Comments – status
- Attachments – uploads and edits
- Plugin install and updated
- Users – login, create, logout, update
- Core updates – when WordPress itself is updated to a new version
- Widgets – get info when someone adds, updates or removes a widget in a sidebar
-
bbPress – view changes to forums and topics and view user changes
-
Gravity Forms – see who created, edited or deleted a form, field, or entry
- + more things via it’s extender classes
Follow development and contribute
The development of Simple History takes place at GitHub. There you can file bug reports or even make changes yourself and send pull requests.
https://github.com/bonny/WordPress-Simple-History
API
If you are a theme or plugin developer you can add your own things to the history log by using the function simple_history_add().
Example:
[php]
simple_history_add("action=edited&object_type=plugin&object_name=your_plugin_name");
[/php]
Filters
There some filters that you can use to control the behavior of Simple History:
- simple_history_view_history_capability
- simple_history_show_settings_page
- simple_history_show_on_dashboard
- simple_history_show_as_page
Kul idé. Undrar bara vad man ska ha för praktisk nytta av att se historiken. Kanske om man har fler än 1 användare då.
Mvh Jens
Precis, bra om man är ett team som jobbar på en sajt. Fast jag har även upptäckt att jag använder den lite då och då för att snabbt komma åt dom grejjerna (blogginlägg, sidor, bilder..) jag senaste jobbade med.
vore finfint om det fanns nån hook i denna plugg så att man kunde logga sina egna customgrejor också. eller man kanske bara kan kalla på simple_history_add() iofs…hm
Absolut! Det jag behöver göra är nog att spika exakt hur funktionen anropas (tänkte ta å ändra det lite) och sen så ska lite dokumenation upp.
Is it possible to track changes to the theme files (header.php for example) with your Simple History plugin?
If you mean things you upload via FTP then no. If you mean when you edit the file within wordpress, then maybe, I haven’t looked at it.
Hi Par – This is an awesome plugin! Is there any way to exclude tracking by user role please? We only need to track “admin” and “editor”. We really need to exclude tracking of “subscriber”. – LL
Can anybody help me with this please?
Thank you,
LL
not at the moment, but i’ll try to add more actions and filter in future versions, so you can modify this yourself.
I need to track the actual changes in the text, like version handling. Is that possible?
Not at the moment. That feature is however already built in in WordPress. The Revamped Revisions in version 3.6 (http://wordpress.org/news/2013/08/oscar/) would do it I think.
Will the simple history plugin be updated any time soon so that it is compatible with WordPress 3.6?
This works great but anyway to add the ip address? If you have more than one admin accessing the site there is no way to know who is who.
Really like your plugin! 🙂
But could you please make this rss-feed optional. I think it’s a great security issue which I would like to be able to switch off when not needed.
I looked into the code and disabled the feed (until next update). Implementing a user-choice must be a few lines more, please take the time.
Thanks a lot!
Will the simple history plugin be updated so that it is compatible with WordPress 3.8?
Never mind, it works great in 3.8 🙂
Is there any way to extend the history to more then 60 days?
Yes, see this discussion:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/increase-60-days-limit-for-cleaning-database?replies=6
simple history can save log with my functions ?
How can i use ?
Yes, you can log anything with it. Please use function
simple_history_add();. See example under headline “Add your own events to simple history” on plugin homepage.Hi Pär, very nice and easy plugin I’m not very technical myself, so do you have any instruction on how I can add the secrete functionality and rss feed to receive updates on my mobile device.
Thank you!
You need a RSS Reader, if you use Iphone I recommend Reeder or Unread. Then you add the RSS-feed that is available in WordPress in menu Settings » Simple History.
Is it possible to have it track users that have watched a posted video and how long they watched it for? As this would help me a lot.
Yes, that’s possible. You can use the function
simple_history_add();to log anything. See the plugin homepage for more info.I wonder if it can track also custom fields. I want to make a public page, where would be updates and only updates. And my idea is that when someone changes a post – e.g. text and some 3 meta fields, i would show on that page, what exactly was changed, e.g. “20.11. Post “Lorem Ipsum”. Changed Text, meta 1, Meta 2 and meta 7. So that when someone need to track some information and need to be informed about changes, he would have exactly the information that he needs, so he could e.g. repair his notes etc.
Sure, that’s possible. You would have to do some coding to do it however. Start looking at the save_post action: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Action_Reference/save_post. There you can access both old and new custom field values. Then you use simple_history_add() to add the info to the log. Good luck!