> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://xoops.gitbook.io/userlog-tutorial/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://xoops.gitbook.io/userlog-tutorial/introduction.md).

# Introduction

Userlog is a node logger which can log your user/visitor activities in your site from a preferred node.

This is a very useful tool for Webmasters in busy sites. For example, you can log your other Admins navigation.

Current nodes for logging are: user ID, user group and visitor IP.You can store logs in a database, in a file or both.

Attention: Userlog module will only work in Admin part of modules that use the ModuleAdmin class.

## Features:

* Log user activities and navigations.

Examples:

```
1- The possibility to list all the IPs used from a certain user, and conversely to list all the users logged from a defined IP to find duplicate users.

2- Find deleted items from your database.

3- Find admin user activities(webmasters, moderators, ...)

4- Find users who come to your site from Google.
```

* Can log users by getting User ID, User group or visitor IP.
* Logs can be stored in file, database or both.
* Any below user information and/or page data can be selected to be logged.

```
User ID,
Username,
Is Admin?(y/n),
Groups,
User Last Visit,
User IP,
User agent,
URL (Request URI),
Script name,
Referer URI,
Page title,
Is Page admin?(y/n),
Module dirname,
Module name,
Item name,
Item ID,
Request method (GET, POST, ...),
$_GET,
$_POST,
$_REQUEST,
$_FILES,
$_ENV,
$_SESSION,
$_COOKIE,
Headers list,
Logger
```

* Any active module in your installation can be selected and userlog will log users activities only in those modules.
* You can navigate/delete/purge/export to CSV user logs in admin/logs.
* You can render logs from database or file source engine in admin/logs.php.
* To search for logs based on a criteria you have an advance form in admin/logs.php
* You can see/delete/rename/copy/merge/compress(zip)/export to CSV log files in admin/file.php.
* You can see total module views, total user views, total group views in admin/stats.php
* you have an advance form to see any item views using some criteria like what is the module/link/log time/viewer uid/viewer group id of the item in admin/stats.php
* by activating the views block you can set a most viewed items in a module or in the whole website in a specific period of time. e.g.: today most viewed (hot) news
* You can set the module as Active or Idle in preferences.
* If you need to store logs in a file, you can set the working path, working file size, working file name, ... in preferences.
* If you need to store logs in database, you can set the maximum logs thresholds (maximum number of logs and maximum time that logs are stored in the database) in preferences.
* Can be used as a backup/restore tool.
* Used JSON format to store arrays to database for better performance (instead of xoops core serialize).