Using the Better Detection Plugin on your Child Site

If you need a lightweight option for tracking content changes made directly into a site’s database, one plugin which can help is Better Detection. Better Detection is best used In the case where a site might have been hacked, or content for malware was inserted into a site. Once the plugin has been installed and activated, it will add a submenu in wp-admin on;

Better Detection Settings

The plugin will add two tabs for errors and options. The errors will be in the form of content which has been directly changed in the site’s database, and not from wp-admin.

In the options section, you can add an email address where site emails will be sent if content changes have been detected by the better detection plugin. You can also post those changes to a Slack channel if you wanted to track any changes in Slack and keep those out of email.

You can use the MainWP key maker plugin to create your own bulk settings key, which can be used on every connected child site, using the MainWP Bulk Settings Extension to set the correct email in the Better Detection plugin settings.

The created custom database table (which the better detection will add) is named;

wp_better_detection_hashes

The plugin will also create a cron event, which will be run hourly on your site.

better_detection_hourly

The better detection plugin is an easy-to-use, lightweight plugin, which will not cause any site performance issues, while providing one handy function for tracking external database changes made to content.