Overview

Website Activity Monitoring detects when a single visitor rapidly browses multiple monitored pages on your site within a short time window. When the visitor's distinct page count hits a configurable threshold, an alert is recorded and surfaced on your WordPress admin dashboard.

Accessing the Settings

Navigate to Settings → Website Activity Monitoring in the WordPress admin sidebar. You can also click the Settings link on the Plugins page next to the plugin entry.

Configuring Detection Rules

All configuration is done on the Website Activity Monitoring settings page under the Detection Settings section.

Monitored URLs

Enter the site-relative paths you want to watch, one per line. For example:

Python/policies/safeguarding/
/ofsted/
/contact/
/about-us/

• Paths are automatically normalised with a leading and trailing slash.

• Full URLs are also accepted — only the path portion is used.

Monitored Post/Page IDs

If you prefer to track specific posts or pages by their WordPress ID rather than by URL path, enter the IDs as a comma-separated list. For example:

JavaScript42, 108, 215

You can find a post or page ID by editing it and checking the number in the browser address bar (e.g. post.php?post=42).

Time Window

Set the number of minutes within which page visits are counted. The default is 15 minutes.

If a visitor hits 3 monitored pages within this window, an alert fires (assuming the threshold is 3).

Threshold

The number of distinct monitored pages a single visitor must view within the time window to trigger an alert. The default is 3.

Example: With a 15-minute window and a threshold of 3, a visitor who views /safeguarding/, /ofsted/, and /contact/ within 15 minutes will trigger an alert.

Visitor Cookie Name

The name of the browser cookie used to identify returning visitors across page loads. The default is vv_ior_id. You generally do not need to change this unless it conflicts with another plugin.

Cookie Lifetime

How long (in days) the visitor identification cookie persists in the browser. The default is 30 days. This allows the system to recognise the same visitor across multiple sessions.

Alert Retention

How long (in days) alert records are kept in the database before being automatically purged. The default is 30 days. Old alerts are cleaned up by a daily background task.

Show Dashboard Notice

When enabled (default: on), a warning banner appears at the top of the WordPress dashboard whenever there are unseen alerts.

Exclude Logged-in Users

When enabled (default: on, recommended), visits from authenticated WordPress users are not tracked. This prevents staff activity from triggering false alerts.

Viewing Alerts

Dashboard Widget

A widget titled Website Activity Monitoring appears on the main WordPress dashboard (Dashboard → Home). It displays up to 20 recent alerts within the retention period.

Each alert row shows:

Managing Alerts

At the bottom of the dashboard widget, two buttons are available:

Mark All as Seen

Click Mark all as seen to change all current alerts from New to Seen status. This dismisses the admin notice banner. The alert records are retained for reference.

Clear All

Click Clear all to permanently delete all alert records from the database. A confirmation dialog will appear before deletion proceeds. This action cannot be undone.

How Detection Works

1. A visitor lands on any page of your site.

2. The plugin checks whether the page matches any Monitored URL or Monitored Post/Page ID.

3. If it matches, the visit is recorded against the visitor's cookie identifier.

4. The plugin counts how many distinct monitored pages that visitor has viewed within the configured Time Window.

5. If the count meets or exceeds the Threshold, an alert is created.

6. Each visitor can only trigger one alert per time window to prevent duplicate noise.