Reslab Activity Log

A lightweight, privacy-aware audit log plugin for WordPress. Tracks every meaningful change on your site — authentication, content, users, plugins, WooCommerce orders, and more — and stores it in a dedicated database table for maximum performance.

Features

Core tracking

Area	Events
Authentication	Login, logout, failed login attempts
Content	Post creation, publishing, trashing, deletion; slug/title diffs
Users	Registration, profile changes (email, name, password, role changes), deletion
Plugins & Themes	Activation, deactivation, installation, updates, theme switches
Settings	Changes to key wp_options keys (site URL, admin email, permalinks, etc.)
Navigation	Menu updates

WooCommerce integration

• Order status transitions — HPOS-compatible (woocommerce_order_status_changed)
• Product price and stock changes with before/after diff
• Coupon application and removal
• Refund creation (amount, reason, refunded_by)

Polylang integration

• Language assignments logged when a post is saved via Polylang (pll_save_post)

Security alerts (both opt-in, disabled by default)

Two independent hourly WP-Cron checks, each with its own threshold/window:

• Brute-force — too many login_failed events from the same IP.
• Mass deletion — one user logging an unusually large number of deleted events in a short window (compromised/malicious account bulk-deleting content, orders, or users).

Alerts are emailed to the admin; optionally also POSTed as JSON to a webhook URL (Slack/Discord incoming webhooks, Zapier, Make, n8n, or any custom endpoint) — see reslab_al_alert_webhook_url below. Duplicate alerts within the same window are suppressed via transient. A reslab_al_alert_{$type} action hook (bruteforce or mass_deletion) fires for custom PHP integrations beyond a generic webhook.

Privacy & GDPR

• IP anonymisation — enabled by default; mask last IPv4 octet (e.g. 192.168.1.0)
• Email hashing — user email stored as SHA-256 hash, never plain text
• Configurable retention — auto-delete entries older than N days (default: 30)
• Archive before purge (opt-in) — save a gzip CSV snapshot of entries before the nightly purge deletes them; downloadable from Settings (nonce + capability gated, no public URL)
• Custom capabilities — reslab_al_view_log / reslab_al_clear_log / reslab_al_manage_settings for granular role access; reslab_al_viewable_object_types filter further restricts which event types a role sees
• Full uninstall — uninstall.php drops the table, options, transients, archive files, and capabilities

Admin UI

• Located at Tools → Activity Log (not polluting the main menu)
• Filter by action, object type, user, IP address, date range, or free-text search over event details
• Events fired within the same request are grouped into one row (with a +N badge), instead of one row per hook
• Inline before/after diff, collapsed by default (<details>/<summary>)
• Export CSV with active filters applied, or pull events via the read-only REST API (GET /wp-json/reslab-al/v1/events, Application-Password authenticated) for external monitoring/SIEM tools
• Screen Options for per-page count
• Tools → Activity Log Settings — retention (+ archiving), IP anonymisation, both alert types, webhook URL, and "last ran" status for every background job

Requirements

Requirement	Version
WordPress	6.0+
PHP	8.0+
WooCommerce (optional)	7.0+
Polylang (optional)	3.0+

Installation

# Via Composer (if registered)
composer require reslab/activity-log

# Or manually — copy to your plugins directory
cp -r reslab-activity-log /path/to/wp-content/plugins/

Then activate via Plugins → Installed Plugins.

Configuration

Trusted proxy (Cloudflare / reverse proxy)

Add to wp-config.php:

define( 'RESLAB_AL_TRUSTED_PROXIES', '10.0.0.1' ); // IP of your proxy

Or use the filter:

add_filter( 'reslab_al_trusted_proxies', function( array $ips ): array {
    $ips[] = '10.0.0.1';
    return $ips;
} );

Without this, only REMOTE_ADDR is used — no IP spoofing possible from forged headers.

Granting log access to editors or shop managers

Preferred: let the plugin grant it itself on activation/upgrade, no role-editor plugin needed —

add_filter( 'reslab_al_default_roles', function ( array $roles ): array {
    $roles[] = 'shop_manager';
    return $roles;
} );

Or, for a one-off/ad-hoc grant instead:

// Run once, e.g. in a one-time migration or via a role-editor plugin.
$role = get_role( 'shop_manager' );
$role->add_cap( 'reslab_al_view_log' ); // can view
// $role->add_cap( 'reslab_al_clear_log' ); // can also clear

Pair this with reslab_al_viewable_object_types to limit what that role sees once it can view the log at all — e.g. a shop manager who shouldn't see user-management or plugin/theme events:

add_filter( 'reslab_al_viewable_object_types', function ( array $types, int $user_id ): array {
    $user = get_userdata( $user_id );
    if ( $user && in_array( 'shop_manager', $user->roles, true ) ) {
        return [ 'order', 'coupon', 'product' ];
    }
    return $types; // unrestricted for everyone else
}, 10, 2 );

File structure

reslab-activity-log/
├── reslab-activity-log.php          # Plugin header, activation/deactivation, bootstrap
├── uninstall.php                    # Full cleanup on plugin deletion
├── readme.txt                       # WordPress.org readme
├── languages/                       # Translation files (.po/.mo)
├── assets/css/admin.css             # Admin list table + settings page styles
└── includes/
    ├── class-tracker.php            # Core WordPress hook interceptors
    ├── class-tracker-woocommerce.php # WooCommerce-specific hooks (loaded only if WC active)
    ├── class-list-table.php         # WP_List_Table UI + Admin page wrapper
    ├── class-cron.php               # Log rotation, purge, brute-force/mass-deletion alerts (WP-Cron)
    ├── class-settings.php           # Settings page (Tools → Activity Log Settings)
    └── class-rest-api.php           # Read-only REST API (/wp-json/reslab-al/v1/events)

Dev-only, not shipped in a release build (see Development): tests/, vendor/, composer.json, composer.lock, phpunit.xml.dist, .wordpress-org/ (wordpress.org listing assets — banners/icons/screenshots, not plugin code), .gitignore.

Database

The plugin creates a single table {prefix}reslab_activity_log (renamed from {prefix}activity_log in 1.1.0 — earlier installs are migrated automatically via RENAME TABLE on the first request after upgrading):

CREATE TABLE wp_reslab_activity_log (
    id          BIGINT(20) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    created_at  DATETIME            NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
    user_id     BIGINT(20) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    ip_address  VARCHAR(45)         NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    action      VARCHAR(50)         NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    object_type VARCHAR(50)         NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    object_id   BIGINT(20) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    context     LONGTEXT,
    request_id  VARCHAR(20)         NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    PRIMARY KEY (id),
    KEY idx_created_at     (created_at),
    KEY idx_user_id        (user_id),
    KEY idx_action         (action),
    KEY idx_object_type    (object_type),
    KEY idx_action_created (action, created_at),
    KEY idx_request_id     (request_id)
);

request_id (added in 1.3.0) is a short random ID shared by every event logged within the same HTTP/cron request — it's what lets the admin UI collapse a single editorial save (which can fire several hooks: status transition, content diff, Polylang language assignment) into one row instead of 3-6 near-duplicate ones.

Hooks reference

Filters

Filter	Description
reslab_al_trusted_proxies	Array of trusted proxy IP addresses for forwarded-header IP resolution
reslab_al_viewable_object_types	array $types, int $user_id — restrict which object_type values the current user can see in the log, export, and REST API. Empty (default) = unrestricted.
reslab_al_default_roles	array $roles — roles granted reslab_al_view_log / reslab_al_clear_log / reslab_al_manage_settings on activation and on every schema upgrade. Defaults to [ 'administrator' ].

Actions

Action	Description
reslab_al_alert_bruteforce	array $payload — fires after a brute-force alert email is sent. $payload has ip, attempts, window_hours, log_url.
reslab_al_alert_mass_deletion	array $payload — fires after a mass-deletion alert email is sent. $payload has user_id, user_login, deletions, window_hours, log_url.

Use these for integrations a generic webhook POST can't handle (a Telegram bot API call, a signed Slack SDK request, writing to another system, etc.). For simpler cases, set reslab_al_alert_webhook_url in Settings instead — no code required.

REST API

GET /wp-json/reslab-al/v1/events — read-only, paginated (page, per_page, max 200), authenticated via WP Application Passwords, gated by reslab_al_view_log. Accepts the same filter_action / filter_object_type / filter_user / filter_date_from / filter_date_to / filter_ip / filter_search query params as the admin screen, and respects reslab_al_viewable_object_types. Response includes X-WP-Total / X-WP-TotalPages headers.

Security

• All database queries use $wpdb->prepare() or $wpdb->insert() with format arrays
• All output is escaped with esc_html(), esc_attr(), esc_url(), or wp_kses()
• Forms protected with wp_nonce_field() / check_admin_referer()
• Capability checks on every admin action (reslab_al_view_log, reslab_al_clear_log, reslab_al_manage_settings)
• IP resolution only trusts forwarded headers from explicitly whitelisted proxy IPs
• CSV export neutralises cell values that would otherwise be interpreted as spreadsheet formulas (CSV/Formula injection)
• Archive downloads use random filenames + a directory-listing-blocking index.php stub, and are only ever served through a nonce + reslab_al_view_log-gated handler — never a public/guessable URL
• REST endpoint requires reslab_al_view_log via WordPress's standard Application Passwords auth; no custom API-key scheme to get wrong

Development

Integration tests run against a real WordPress + MySQL install (via wp-phpunit/wp-phpunit), including WooCommerce loaded the same way it would be as an active plugin — see tests/README.md for setup and how to run them.

tests/, vendor/, composer.json/composer.lock, and phpunit.xml.dist are dev-only and are never included in a release build (the WordPress.org submission ZIP / SVN trunk should only contain the runtime plugin files listed under File structure above, plus readme.txt).

Changelog

1.4.1

• Fixed: successful logins and logouts were logged with the acting user recorded as "Guest" (user_id = 0) — wp_login/wp_logout fire before WordPress considers that user "current" for the request, so get_current_user_id() was still 0 at that point. The tracker now uses the user WordPress itself passes to those hooks.
• Fixed: user-deletion events always logged an empty login — deleted_user fires after the row is already gone from wp_users, so re-fetching by ID always failed. Now uses the WP_User object core passes as the hook's third argument (added in WP 5.5).
• Fixed: the REST API endpoint returned a _doing_it_wrong() notice (wpdb::prepare() called with no placeholders) when hit with no filters active.
• Fixed: the log table's CREATE TABLE SQL had inconsistent internal whitespace between column names and types. dbDelta()'s column-definition parser is picky about exactly one space there; the padding made it think every padded column had changed, reissuing 8 ALTER TABLE ... CHANGE COLUMN statements on every version-gated upgrade check — never actually a no-op like the code's own comments assumed. Harmless functionally, but unnecessary DDL against a potentially large log table.
• Added: reslab_al_default_roles filter — controls which roles get the plugin's capabilities on activation/upgrade (previously hardcoded to administrator only).
• Changed: the schema-upgrade lock (reslab_al_maybe_upgrade_table()) now uses an atomic add_option() instead of a get_transient()/set_transient() pair, closing a check-then-act race under concurrent requests.
• Internal: added a full PHPUnit integration test suite (tests/, dev-only, see Development below) exercising every tracker, the cron jobs, list-table filtering/grouping, the REST API, and settings sanitization against a real WordPress + MySQL install.

1.4.0

• Added: Mass Deletion Alerts — a second, independent anomaly check (off by default) for one user deleting an unusual number of objects in a short window
• Added: optional webhook URL — alerts are POSTed as JSON alongside email (Slack/Discord/Zapier/Make/n8n); new reslab_al_alert_{$type} action hook for custom integrations
• Added: "Archive before purge" — gzip CSV snapshot of entries saved before the nightly purge deletes them, downloadable from Settings
• Added: read-only REST API (GET /wp-json/reslab-al/v1/events) for external monitoring/SIEM tools