Audit Trail Plugin

Oct 31, 2006 | Tags: , , | Written by Administrator

Audit Trail is a plugin to keep track of what is going on inside your blog. It does this by recording certain actions (such as who logged in and when) and storing this information in the form of a log. Not only that but it records the full contents of posts (and pages) and allows you to restore a post to a previous version at any time.

To summarize:

  • Log of user actions inside your blog - useful for finding out who did what in a multi-user system
  • Post/page revisions and restorations - every change to a post or page is recorded and can be instantly restored to a previous version
  • Differences are shown graphically
  • Extensible, allowing other plugins the ability to add and display items in the Audit Trail
  • Ability to track registered user page visits
  • Fully localized

Version History

  • 1.0.10 - Only include prototype on AT pages
  • 1.0.9 - WP 2.5 compatability
  • 1.0.8 - Show log items according to blog timezone offset
  • 1.0.7 - Fix favicon.ico logs, ignore certain users, track failed login attempts
  • 1.0.6 - Fix warning, allow searching by username

Installation

The plugin is simple to install:

  1. Download audit-trail.zip
  2. Unzip
  3. Upload audit-trail directory to your /wp-content/plugins directory
  4. Go to the plugin management page and enable the plugin

You can find full details of installing a plugin on the plugin installation page.

NOTE: If you are upgrading from a pre 1.0 version please de-activate and then re-activate the plugin. This will upgrade your database tables (unfortunately any existing Audit Trail data will be lost).

Usage

Once the plugin is installed then your actions are already being recorded. You can view the Audit Trail log from the Manage/Audit Trail page.

Log

Note that some entries in the log can be clicked and will expand to show more details.

Post & Page history

The Audit Trail plugin records the entire post everytime it is changed. This can then be used to provide a version history along with the capability of restoring a post to a previous version through this interface which appears on appropriate posts:

Previous versions

Usage is simple. Select the version you wish to view, click the 'view' button and examine the contents of the post. From here you choose to restore this version, delete it, or close the contents.

Restoring a post to a previous version will be recorded in the Audit Trail logs just like any other change. If you decide you don't like the restored version you can always restore back to another version.

NOTE: Installing the Audit Trail plugin in a blog with existing posts will mean that you have no revision history until a post has been changed at least twice (there is no log before the plugin, and there is little point allowing a restoration to the same version as is currently live)

Options

From the options page you can configure exactly what actions are audited. Any plugins that support Audit Trail will also display themself here.

Permissions

Users with the 'edit_plugins' or 'audit_trail' capability can view and administer the Audit Trail plugin. The 'audit_trail' capability can be added with the Role Manager plugin.

Support

Please direct all support questions to the Audit Trail support forum. Any support questions left on this page may not be answered.

Bugs & New Features

A full list of all bugs can be found in the Audit Trail issue tracker.

A full list of all requested features can be found in the Audit Trail feature tracker.

Date Current requested features
31 Jan 2008 Include meta-data in version history
31 Jan 2008 Option to show version history for visitors
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Comments (page 1 of 9)

  1. adas :

    Nov 10, 2006 3:22 pm

    But this plugin don't like polish chars... (UTF-8)

    Screenshot: http://www.fotosik.pl/pokaz_obrazek/pelny/70331bdb38589547.html

  2. Will :

    Nov 5, 2006 4:20 am

    oh of course...

    feels like an idiot ;)

    have a great weekend!

  3. John (author) :

    Nov 3, 2006 8:26 pm

    You will get an audit trail for all posts. Remember that you need at least 2 edits for a post to show a history. An existing post will have been edited before Audit Trail, and will only have a post history when you edit it two times after installing Audit Trail

  4. Will :

    Nov 3, 2006 8:17 pm

    Oh ok for new posts only it seems

    old posts do not show audit trail...

  5. John (author) :

    Nov 2, 2006 4:18 am

    You can restore posts when editing the post itself.

  6. Will :

    Nov 2, 2006 3:57 am

    Hey,

    Well, I must be blind!

    I don't see where you can restore a previous post:

    http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/7752/audittrailpu0.jpg

    Thanks a lot,

    Will

  7. Ryan Williams :

    Nov 1, 2006 10:24 pm

    This is a really good plugin and a really good idea. :) :)

  8. Catalin Zamfir :

    Nov 1, 2006 8:36 am

    Congratulate yourself on a very good plugin. Works wonderfull and in terms of functions added to the default WordPress instalation, it has an impact on workload and work management.

    Great job, good idea implementing it. We hugg you :D.

  9. John (author) :

    Oct 31, 2006 11:34 pm

    Yes, both pages and posts. I've edited the text to make this clearer.

  10. author
    Travis :

    Oct 31, 2006 11:28 pm

    Does this work on pages, too, or just posts? I realize they are in the same DB table, but it seems like few plugins actually work with both...

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