Tim Boulley

BT Visitor Insights is a privacy-friendly, self-hosted analytics plugin. Everything stays on your server — no Google Analytics, no third-party tracking scripts, no data sent to any external analytics platform.
Activate it and your dashboard starts filling with real visitor data: where they’re from, what pages they viewed, what device they’re on, and how long they’ve been around.
<h4>Why use it?</h4>
<ul>
<li>No third-party tracking. All visitor data stays in your WordPress database.</li>
<li>Zero configuration. Activate the plugin and data starts collecting immediately.</li>
<li>Lightweight. No bulky frontend tracking script — tracking happens server-side, so it works alongside any caching plugin.</li>
<li>Real-time. See who’s on your site right now (last 15 minutes).</li>
<li>Respectful. Honors the Do Not Track browser header and skips logged-in administrators.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Real-time active-visitor count</li>
<li>IP geolocation — city, region, country, country flag</li>
<li>Page view tracking with titles and referrers</li>
<li>Device detection — desktop, mobile, tablet</li>
<li>Browser and operating system breakdown</li>
<li>Top pages, top referrers, top countries</li>
<li>30-day visual bar chart</li>
<li>Per-visitor history — click any IP to see every page they viewed</li>
<li>Date-range filters — today, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, all time</li>
<li>Auto-cleanup — old data is purged based on your configurable retention period (default 90 days)</li>
<li>IP exclusion list and IP anonymization (in Settings)</li>
<li>CSV export of visitors and page views</li>
<li>Dashboard widget on the WP admin home screen</li>
<li>Admin bar badge with live visitor count</li>
<li>Skips bots, crawlers, and logged-in admins</li>
<li>Respects the Do Not Track header</li>
</ul>
<h4>Pro version</h4>
A <a href="https://boulleytechnology.ca/bt-visitor-insights.php" rel="nofollow ugc">Pro version</a> adds:
<ul>
<li>Email digests — daily or weekly HTML report with stats, top pages, and trend comparisons</li>
<li>Traffic-spike alerts — get an email when page views exceed your normal baseline</li>
<li>Geo-blocking — block or redirect visitors from specific countries</li>
<li>Scheduled CSV exports — weekly or monthly automated email exports</li>
<li>Goals & conversions — track URL-based goals and unique converters</li>
<li>REST API access — query stats, visitors, and page views via /wp-json/btvi/v1/</li>
<li>Multi-site rollup — aggregate stats from multiple WordPress sites in one dashboard</li>
<li>White-label dashboard — customize the menu label and page title for client sites</li>
<li>Unlimited data retention — keep visitor history forever</li>
</ul>
The Pro version is sold separately and is not required to use this free plugin.
<h3>External Services</h3>
This plugin uses the ip-api.com geolocation API to look up the city, region, and country for each new visitor IP address. This request is made server-side from your WordPress installation when a visitor is first seen.
<ul>
<li>Service: ip-api.com</li>
<li>What is sent: the visitor’s IP address</li>
<li>When: once per unique visitor IP, server-side</li>
<li>Privacy policy: https://ip-api.com/docs/legal</li>
<li>Terms of service: https://ip-api.com/docs/legal</li>
</ul>
No data is sent to Boulley Technology or any other third party.

BT Visitor Insights

Lightweight, self-hosted visitor analytics with IP geolocation, page views, device detection, and a real-time dashboard. No third-party scripts.

SupportFromRichard

SFR Analytics is a self-hosted analytics plugin for WordPress. All visitor data is stored in your own database — nothing is sent to third-party services. No cookies, no external scripts, no tracking pixels.
Get a clear picture of your site’s traffic without compromising your visitors’ privacy.
Need a central multi-site dashboard? Use the free <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/sfr-analytics-hub/" rel="ugc">SFR Analytics Hub</a> plugin to aggregate analytics from multiple WordPress sites.
<h4>Dashboard at a Glance</h4>
<ul>
<li>Views, Visitors, Sessions — core metrics with period-over-period comparison</li>
<li>Bounce Rate & Pages per Session — engagement indicators</li>
<li>Traffic Over Time — interactive line chart with date range presets</li>
<li>Top Content — your most viewed posts and pages</li>
<li>Traffic Sources — where your visitors are coming from</li>
<li>Top Referring Sites — individual domains sending you traffic</li>
<li>Entry & Exit Pages — first and last pages in each visit</li>
<li>Device Types — desktop, mobile and tablet breakdown</li>
<li>Browsers & Operating Systems — which browsers and OS your visitors use</li>
<li>Geographic Distribution — visitor countries (only available if using a CDN like Cloudflare that provides country headers; all other tracking works without a CDN)</li>
<li>Campaign Performance — UTM campaign results with source/medium drill-down</li>
<li>Online Now — on-demand live visitor count with optional online-only auto-refresh in the dashboard</li>
</ul>
All dashboard sections are collapsible — show only what matters to you.
<h4>Campaign Manager & UTM Link Builder</h4>
Plan and track marketing campaigns without leaving WordPress:
<ul>
<li>Create campaigns with notes and track their performance over time</li>
<li>Build UTM links with a visual tool — pick a page, choose source/medium/campaign, and get a ready-to-use URL</li>
<li>Smart page picker — search across all your content types with post type and category filtering</li>
<li>Preset sources and mediums — common options (Facebook, Google, newsletter, etc.) with clear descriptions</li>
<li>Save generated links for quick reference and reuse</li>
<li>Custom sources and mediums — add your own and they’re saved for next time</li>
<li>Auto-lowercase campaign names to prevent data fragmentation</li>
</ul>
<h4>Smart Bot Detection</h4>
Not all traffic is human. SFR Analytics filters out noise automatically:
<ul>
<li>200+ known bot patterns — search engines, AI crawlers, SEO tools, monitoring bots, headless browsers, security scanners and more</li>
<li>JavaScript verification — a lightweight inline script confirms real browser execution, so bots that don’t run JavaScript are never counted</li>
<li>Missing header detection — flags requests without User-Agent or Accept-Language headers</li>
<li>Filterable patterns — add your own via the <code>sfran_bot_patterns</code> filter</li>
</ul>
The dashboard shows you exactly how much traffic was filtered: total requests vs verified human visits.
<h4>Privacy First</h4>
<ul>
<li>No cookies — visitor identification uses anonymous hashed fingerprints</li>
<li>No PII stored — IP addresses are hashed (SHA-256), never stored in plain text</li>
<li>Optional IP anonymisation — strip the last octet before hashing</li>
<li>Do Not Track support — respects the browser DNT header when enabled</li>
<li>Local storage only — your data never leaves your server</li>
<li>Configurable retention — automatically delete data after 30 to 3,650 days</li>
<li>GDPR-ready privacy text — copy-paste paragraph for your privacy policy</li>
</ul>
<h4>IP & Country Filtering</h4>
<ul>
<li>Exclude specific IP addresses or CIDR ranges (e.g. <code>192.168.1.0/24</code>)</li>
<li>One-click “Ignore My IP” button</li>
<li>Exclude entire countries by country code</li>
<li>Exclude logged-in users by role (administrators, editors, etc.)</li>
</ul>
<h4>REST API</h4>
A full set of authenticated REST API endpoints lets you access your analytics data programmatically:
<ul>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/summary</code> — overview stats with optional comparison</li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/top-content</code> — most viewed content with pagination</li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/traffic-sources</code> — referrer breakdown</li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/time-series</code> — daily views/visitors/sessions</li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/campaigns</code> — campaign performance</li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/entry-pages</code> and <code>/sfran/v1/exit-pages</code></li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/referrers</code> — top referring domains</li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/devices</code>, <code>/sfran/v1/browsers</code>, <code>/sfran/v1/geographic</code></li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/online-now</code> — current active visitor count for the last N minutes (default 5)</li>
</ul>
All endpoints require authentication (WordPress Application Passwords or other REST API auth) and the <code>manage_options</code> capability. Use these to build custom dashboards, export data, or integrate with other tools.
<h4>Performance</h4>
<ul>
<li>Batch processing — pageviews are buffered and written in batches, reducing database load</li>
<li>Indexed tables — optimised queries for fast dashboard rendering</li>
<li>Lightweight frontend — a single inline verification script, no external files loaded for visitors</li>
<li>No impact on page speed — tracking uses <code>navigator.sendBeacon</code> (non-blocking)</li>
</ul>
<h4>Works with SFR Analytics Hub</h4>
SFR Analytics collects data on each individual site.
For cross-site reporting, install the free <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/sfr-analytics-hub/" rel="ugc">SFR Analytics Hub</a> on your main site.
With SFR Analytics Hub, you can also view live online visitors across all connected sites from one central dashboard.
The WordPress.org Hub edition supports up to 3 connected sites.
Need more than 3 sites with the same workflow? See <a href="https://supportfromrichard.co.uk/sfr-analytics/" rel="nofollow ugc">SFR Analytics Hub Pro</a>.

SFR Analytics

Lightweight, privacy-focused WordPress analytics. Track pageviews, visitors, campaigns and more — all data stored locally in your own database.

BT Visitor Insights vs SFR Analytics