A privacy-first WooCommerce plugin that shows current live visitor presence by country without storing persistent visitor history.
Devlin Geo Pulse helps merchants understand current storefront activity in real time while keeping the data model intentionally minimal and privacy-first.
What it does:
- Anonymous storefront heartbeat tracking
- Active visitor count in WooCommerce admin
- Ranked country pulse view for active visitors
- Compact device-mix snapshot for the live heartbeat window
- Top country and new-visitors-last-minute metrics
- WooCommerce dashboard page under WooCommerce > Live Geo Pulse
- WooCommerce settings tab under WooCommerce > Settings > Devlin Geo Pulse
- Privacy-first storage using short-lived active presence only
- WooCommerce settings for enabling tracking and adjusting heartbeat cadence
Privacy guardrails:
- No raw IP addresses are stored
- No personally identifiable information is stored
- No persistent visitor history is retained
- Presence data expires automatically when heartbeats stop
How it works:
- A lightweight frontend script sends anonymous heartbeat requests from the storefront.
- The plugin derives a coarse country code and device bucket from request metadata.
- Active presence is stored only in short-lived cache/transient state.
- The WooCommerce admin dashboard polls a summary endpoint for live updates.
The admin dashboard can optionally expose a preview traffic control that creates short-lived sample visitors so the UI can be previewed without opening multiple storefront tabs.
The merchant dashboard uses native WordPress and WooCommerce admin patterns so the interface feels familiar inside a standard store management workflow.
Screenshots
WooCommerce live dashboard with active visitor metrics, ranked country pulse, and device mix.
WooCommerce settings screen for tracking, heartbeat interval, and privacy notice configuration.
Does this plugin store IP addresses?
No. The plugin is designed to avoid storing raw IP addresses.
Does this plugin keep a visitor history?
No. It stores only short-lived active presence state for the current live window.
Does this plugin store personal data?
No. The plugin is designed to avoid storing personally identifiable information and uses only short-lived anonymous presence state.
Does it require WooCommerce?
Yes. WooCommerce must be installed and active.
How does the plugin determine country?
The plugin derives a coarse country code server-side from request metadata and does not store raw IP addresses.
What if activation previously triggered a critical error?
Update to the latest plugin files, ensure WooCommerce is active first, then reactivate the plugin. If WordPress entered Recovery Mode, deactivate the broken copy before reactivating the updated one.
Can I simulate visits just to preview the dashboard UI?
Yes. The dashboard can expose a preview traffic control for WooCommerce managers. It creates short-lived sample visitors for previewing the admin UI and clearly does not represent real shoppers.
ChangeLog
1.0.4
- Replaced the public heartbeat route
__return_true callback with a dedicated permission callback that verifies the presence nonce at route permission time.
- Normalized the remaining transient key prefix to
devlin_geo_pulse_ for better uniqueness and consistency.
- Refreshed release metadata and regenerated the WordPress.org submission package for the approved
devlin-geo-pulse slug.
1.0.3
- Refreshed the pending review submission package after the native WordPress/WooCommerce admin redesign and security-focused hardening work.
- Expanded unit coverage for environment helpers, country/device resolvers, WooCommerce settings fields, presence storage, and data helpers.
- Hardened GitHub Actions validation, packaging, and WordPress.org deployment workflows.
1.0.2
- Added explicit admin REST nonce verification for dashboard summary and preview traffic actions.
- Hardened the submission package for WordPress.org review by excluding hidden placeholder files and dev-only artifacts.
- Updated WordPress compatibility metadata to
Tested up to: 6.9.
1.0.0
- Added a preview traffic tool for store owners who want to demonstrate the live dashboard with short-lived sample visitors.
- Fixed activation safety for WooCommerce settings registration by lazy-loading the settings page only after
WC_Settings_Page is available.
- Initial public release of Devlin Geo Pulse.
- Added privacy-first live visitor presence tracking for WooCommerce storefronts.
- Added WooCommerce admin dashboard metrics for active visitors and country distribution.
- Added anonymous frontend heartbeat tracking with short-lived active-state storage.
- Added WooCommerce settings for tracking, heartbeat interval, and privacy notice copy.
