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.

YEB.to

Google Analytics alternative for WordPress: clean stats, interactions, verified bots, UTM, GeoIP, CSV export. Privacy-first.
<h3>What you get</h3>
<ul>
<li>At-a-glance KPIs: pageviews, sessions, unique visitors, pages per session.</li>
<li>Interactions (sessions): session explorer with landing, referrer, per-session timeline (page history), avg. load, distinct pages, pageviews, expand/collapse.</li>
<li>Content insights: top URLs, titles, post IDs.</li>
<li>Acquisition: referrers (root domains) and UTM (source/medium/campaign).</li>
<li>Audience: countries, regions, cities, languages, common screen sizes.</li>
<li>Tech: device type, OS, browser.</li>
<li>Bots (with verification): separate verified search engine hits (Google, Bing, etc.).</li>
<li>Networks: major networks/ISPs and their CIDR ranges.</li>
<li>CSV export: exports exactly what your current filters show.</li>
<li>SPA-friendly & IPv6-ready.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Why people choose it</h3>
<ul>
<li>Clear and calm: focused reports, no maze of menus.</li>
<li>Actionable filters: time window, path, title, country/city, referrer, device, OS, browser, language, UTM, bot type.</li>
<li>You stay in control: richer info (city, device brand/model, verified bot checks) is optional — enable only what you want.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Setup (optional extras)</h3>
Want richer details like city/region, device brand/model, or verified bot checks?
<ol>
<li>Sign in at https://yeb.to and create an API key (free test credits).</li>
<li>In WordPress, open Analytics (YEB) → Settings, paste your key.</li>
<li>Toggle the extras you want (Geo, Network/ASN, Device details, Bot verification).</li>
</ol>
Nothing is sent to YEB until you add a key and turn on a feature — you choose.
<h3>Usage</h3>
<ul>
<li>Go to Analytics (YEB) → Dashboard for your reports.</li>
<li>Use the tabs to dive into Overview, Interactions, Content, Acquisition, Audience, Tech, Bots, Networks.</li>
<li>Click Export CSV to download exactly what you’re viewing.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Shortcode (public mini-stats)</h3>
Show small, public counters anywhere (pages, posts, widgets, site editor).
Basic: 
 `
[waby_visits_stats] ; whole site, last 7 days 
[waby_visits_stats period=”30d”] ; whole site, last 30 days 
[waby_visits_stats period=”1d” bots=”only”] ; bots only, yesterday 
[waby_visits_stats page=”/pricing”] ; just /pricing page, last 7 days
<pre><code>`
</code></pre>
Auto-detect current page: 
 `
[waby_visits_stats current_page]
<pre><code>`
</code></pre>
If <code>page=""</code> isn’t provided, <code>current_page</code> uses the current request path.
Show exactly what you want: 
 `
[waby_visits_stats show=”visits”] ; only total visits (pageviews) 
[waby_visits_stats show=”uniques”] ; only unique visitors 
[waby_visits_stats show=”both”] ; both (default)
<pre><code>`
</code></pre>
Bot filter: 
– <code>bots="exclude"</code> (default) — show human traffic and unverified bot-like traffic treated as human 
– <code>bots="only"</code> — bot traffic only 
– <code>bots="include"</code> — include everything
Labels, layout & CSS hooks (for custom styling): 
 `
[waby_visits_stats 
current_page 
show=”both” 
label_visits=”Views” 
label_uniques=”Visitors” 
layout=”inline” ; inline | stack 
sep=” • ” 
wrap_tag=”div” ; div | span | p 
item_tag=”span” ; span | div 
wrapper_class=”stats stats–mini” 
item_class=”stats__item” 
label_class=”stats__label” 
value_class=”stats__value” 
]
<pre><code>``
</code></pre>
All attributes: 
– <code>period</code>: <code>1d</code>, <code>7d</code> (default), <code>30d</code> 
– <code>page</code>: limit to a path (e.g. <code>/pricing</code>) 
– <code>current_page</code>: presence-only flag to use the current URL path 
– <code>bots</code>: <code>exclude</code> (default), <code>only</code>, <code>include</code> 
– <code>show</code>: <code>visits</code>, <code>uniques</code>, <code>both</code> (default) 
– <code>label_visits</code> (default <code>Visits</code>), <code>label_uniques</code> (default <code>Unique</code>) 
– <code>layout</code>: <code>inline</code> (default) or <code>stack</code> 
– <code>sep</code>: separator when <code>layout="inline"</code> (default <code>|</code>) 
– <code>wrap_tag</code>: <code>div</code> (default), <code>span</code>, <code>p</code> 
– <code>item_tag</code>: <code>span</code> (default), <code>div</code> 
– <code>wrapper_class</code>, <code>item_class</code>, <code>label_class</code>, <code>value_class</code>: extra CSS classes
<h3>Styling the shortcode</h3>
Paste this CSS into Appearance → Customize → Additional CSS (or your theme stylesheet): 
 `css 
/* YEB Visits – public stats */ 
.yeb-visits-stats { 
 display: inline-flex; 
 gap: .75rem; 
 align-items: baseline; 
 font: 500 14px/1.3 system-ui, -apple-system, Segoe UI, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; 
} 
.yeb-visits-stats.yeb–layout-stack { 
 display: inline-grid; 
 gap: .35rem; 
} 
.yeb-visits-stats .yeb-metric { 
 display: inline-flex; 
 gap: .35rem; 
 align-items: baseline; 
 white-space: nowrap; 
} 
.yeb-visits-stats .yeb-metric__label { opacity: .7; } 
.yeb-visits-stats .yeb-metric__value { font-weight: 700; } 
.yeb-visits-stats .yeb-sep { opacity: .35; } 
 “
<h3>Privacy, Cookies & Data Flow</h3>
You choose which extras to enable (location, device details, bot verification). IPs are stored in a way that groups them by network (not exact address). You can limit how often extras are called and how much data is kept.
<h3>External Service & Data Flow (Guideline 6)</h3>
This plugin can optionally call the YEB API to enrich your local analytics. Nothing is sent to YEB until you add an API key in Analytics (YEB) → Settings and enable the related toggle.
Endpoints (HTTPS):
<ul>
<li>GeoIP: <code>{base}/country</code>, <code>{base}/city</code>, <code>{base}/asn</code> (default base: <code>https://api.yeb.to/v1/geoip</code>)</li>
<li>Device analyze: <code>{endpoint}</code> (default: <code>https://api.yeb.to/v1/device-analyze</code>)</li>
<li>Bot verification: <code>{base}</code> or <code>{base}/{vendor}</code> (default base: <code>https://api.yeb.to/v1/bot/detect/detect</code>)</li>
</ul>
What is sent and when:
<ul>
<li>GeoIP Country — IP address; only if API key set and “Country” enabled (purpose: country lookup)</li>
<li>GeoIP City/Region — IP address; only if API key set and “Region & City” enabled (purpose: city/region)</li>
<li>ASN/Network — IP address; only if API key set and “ASN & Network” enabled (purpose: ASN/CIDR)</li>
<li>Device analyze — User-Agent; only if API key set and “Parse user-agent strings” enabled (purpose: browser/OS/device parsing, bot type)</li>
<li>Bot verification — IP + User-Agent; only if API key set and “Bot-Detect” enabled and UA looks like a bot (purpose: verify known crawlers)</li>
</ul>
All requests use HTTPS. The plugin stores analytics locally; enrichment results are cached locally.
YEB policies:
<ul>
<li>Privacy Policy: <a href="https://yeb.to/privacy" rel="nofollow ugc">https://yeb.to/privacy</a></li>
<li>Terms of Service: <a href="https://yeb.to/terms" rel="nofollow ugc">https://yeb.to/terms</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Cookies</h3>
Two first-party cookies (pseudonymous GUIDs):
<ul>
<li><code>yeb_sid</code> — session id, 30 minutes; groups pageviews into sessions.</li>
<li><code>yeb_vid</code> — visitor id, 1 year; counts returning unique visitors.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Consent & Opt-Out (Guidelines 7 & 9)</h3>
By default, the beacon loads for visitors (logged-in admins excluded unless you enable Track logged-in admins). If your jurisdiction or policy requires consent before placing analytics cookies, gate the beacon with your consent tool.
Example (dequeue until consent):
<pre><code>`php
</code></pre>
/** 
 * Stop the YEB beacon until a custom consent flag is set. 
 * Replace the condition with your CMP’s check. 
 */ 
add_action(‘wp_enqueue_scripts’, function () { 
 $consent_given = isset($_COOKIE[‘my_consent_flag’]) && $_COOKIE[‘my_consent_flag’] === ‘yes’; 
 if ( ! $consent_given ) { 
 wp_dequeue_script(‘waby-visits-beacon’); 
 wp_deregister_script(‘waby-visits-beacon’); 
 } 
}, 100); 
 `
<h3>Public REST Endpoint</h3>
The plugin exposes an intentionally public ingest endpoint used by the front-end beacon:
<pre><code>`
</code></pre>
POST /wp-json/waby/v1/visit 
Alias: POST /wp-json/yeb/v1/visit 
 `
It accepts sanitized visit metadata (URL, path, referrer, UTM, screen, language, etc.) and stores it in your site’s database. It does not expose private data or modify content.
<h3>Data Retention & IP Handling</h3>
<ul>
<li>A salted hash of the visitor IP is stored to group traffic by network.</li>
<li>The raw IP is not stored by default. If you enable Store raw IP (packed), it is retained only for the number of days you set (default 7 days) and is visible to admins only.</li>
<li>During enrichment, the raw IP may be encrypted temporarily and then cleared automatically once enrichment is done or after a short fallback window.</li>
<li>You can limit daily external calls and sampling in Analytics (YEB) → Settings.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Uninstall</h3>
<ul>
<li>If you enable Delete all data on uninstall in settings, uninstalling the plugin will remove its custom tables and options.</li>
<li>Leave it off if you want to keep your analytics data.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Filters & Extensibility</h3>
<ul>
<li><code>waby_visits_stats_output</code> — filter the final HTML of the public stats shortcode.</li>
<li><code>waby_visits_cache_ttl</code> — filter select-query cache TTL (seconds) used by the dashboard and shortcode.</li>
</ul>

Website Analytics by YEB

WordPress analytics: pageviews & sessions with interactions, verified bots, GeoIP, CSV export. Privacy-first.

BT Visitor Insights vs Website Analytics by YEB