It’s 8:40 on a Monday and the client’s email is already sitting in your inbox: the homepage banner is gone, the contact form isn’t sending, and they’d like to know what happened.
Before anyone can fix it, someone on your team has to work out what changed over the weekend, which means:
- Logging in and clicking through plugin update dates
- Asking around the team chat to see who touched the site last
- Piecing together a timeline from memory and guesswork
And if AI is doing some of that work, it gets harder. Letting AI work on a live client site is a big step to take, and you still need an answer when the client asks what happened.
That’s why we’re partnering with our friends at Melapress, the team behind WP Activity Log.
Together, we’ve built the first way in WordPress to see what Atarim’s AI changed on a site, separate from what you and your team did.
Every agency has its go-to plugin stack, and Atarim does too. You can customise it, and WP Activity Log is the default recommended plugin in the Activity and Logs category, so every site that runs it keeps a running record of what changed, who changed it and when. Atarim won’t install WP Activity Log without your approval, so you remain in control of which plugins are installed on your websites.
The next time a client asks what happened, you can open the log and answer them, with the exact update and the person who made it right there in front of you.
New to WP Activity Log? Here’s what you need to know
WP Activity Log is a WordPress plugin from Melapress that records what happens on a site, including logins, plugin and theme changes, content edits, settings changes and new user accounts.
It answers the question that comes up every time a site misbehaves (you know the one): what changed?
It also gives you a record you can point to for security reviews, client contracts and internal policy.
For the first time, you can see what AI did on a site
As AI takes on more of the work on your client sites, the record of what changed matters more.
WP Activity Log puts that record on the client site itself.
Changes made through Atarim land in the same log as the changes your team makes, so there’s one place to look when you need to know what happened.
That matters more than it sounds. Until now, anything an AI did on a WordPress site got logged under the person who connected it. Your log would show changes under your name that you never touched, with no way to tell your work from the AI’s.
Together with Melapress, we’ve changed that. Every change Atarim’s AI makes that WP Activity Log supports now shows up in the log with AI agent named as the user, right next to what your team and your clients did.
It’s the first and only way in the WordPress ecosystem to see what an AI actually did on a site, and it’ll matter more as more agents start working on the sites you look after.
An activity log has always answered one question: who did what, and when. AI is now one of the “who”. Working with Atarim, we made sure the log shows you clearly when a change came from AI, right next to the changes people made.
Robert Abela, CEO of Melapress
What this means for Atarim users
You can add WP Activity Log to any site straight from your plugin stack in Atarim, where it’s already the default recommended plugin for activity tracking. The integration requires a WP Activity Log Premium or Enterprise plan.
- It connects to Atarim. The log’s activity shows up right in your projects.
- Yesterday’s activity, without the digging. Your project cards show yesterday’s activity at a glance: events, logins, and plugin and theme changes, so you’ll spot a spike before your client does.
What this means for WP Activity Log users
You’ve been building a record of your sites for years: every login, every plugin update, every edit and every new user.
Most of those entries never get read, which is understandable, because nobody on your team has a spare afternoon to scroll through them.
Connect a site to Atarim and the daily totals show up on the project.
That means a jump in logins or a run of plugin changes shows up before anyone has to go looking.
Atarim is an AI agency that plugs into yours and does the client work, so every client gets looked after without you hiring anyone.
Changes Atarim makes that WP Activity Log supports land in the log you already trust, and they can be rolled back.
What to do with an activity log when a client site breaks
When a client emails to say the site looks wrong, an activity log turns guesswork into a short search.
Here’s the order to work through it.
- Start with the time. Ask the client when they first noticed the problem, then look at everything the log recorded in the few hours before that. Most of the time the cause is sitting right there.
- Look at plugins and themes. An update, a plugin switched off, a theme setting changed. A lot of “nobody touched anything” breakages start here.
- Then look at who logged in. A new user account, a login from the client’s office, or a contractor’s account that should have been removed months ago can all explain a change nobody remembers making.
- After that, check settings and content. A permalink change, an edited page or a moved widget can break a layout or a form without anyone realising.
- Once you’ve found it, use a way back. If the change came through Atarim, you can roll it back.
Turn the record into something your client sees
I’ve always thought about client relationships like a bank account. It’s something I picked up back in my old agency, and it’s stuck with me ever since.
- Withdrawals are the moments you need their trust: something breaks, or you go to them with a proposal for more work.
- Deposits are the work they never asked for: the plugin you updated before it caused trouble, or the login you spotted that shouldn’t have been there. It’s small stuff, but it adds up.
You can’t withdraw from an account with nothing in it, right? And you definitely don’t want to be in overdraft with a client.
Most deposits are invisible
But that work only counts if the client knows it happened, and most of it is invisible unless you show them. I fell into this trap myself. We’d do great work all month, and the client had no idea any of it happened.
That’s where your activity log comes in, because it’s the receipt.
Put the receipt in your monthly report
When the monthly report goes out, pull the highlights from the log and put them in plain language. “Updated 14 plugins with a backup taken first” means a lot more to a client than a screen full of log entries.
Do it every month, and the next time something breaks, or you need a yes on a new piece of work, there’s something in the account.
Watch how to let AI loose on client sites, safely
On Tuesday, November 17th, at 11 AM EST / 4 PM UK, Robert Abela (CEO of Melapress) and I are doing something a little crazy and handing AI the keys to a live client site. Come watch! Could be a terrible decision… 😅
If it goes well, you’ll want it on your own client sites. If it doesn’t, you get the best possible demo of the rollback, and we get a story to tell. Either way, you’ll watch the changes Atarim’s AI makes land in WP Activity Log as it happens, with Atarim AI named as the user. It’s the first time anyone’s shown that live, and you’ll leave knowing exactly what to say the next time a client asks “who changed that?”
One record, one place to look
As more of the work on your client sites comes from AI, what matters is that every change is written down somewhere you can find it. So the next time a client emails on a Monday morning asking what happened, you’ll open the log, find the change and roll it back before they’ve finished their first coffee. That’s one more deposit in the account. ☕
Add WP Activity Log from your plugin stack in any project, or come watch Robert and me hand AI the keys on the 17th.
See you there,
Vito
