The weekly email summary is one of those features we built for ourselves first. I quite enjoy getting the email for my own website and for client websites.
The email was introduced in August last year so now I’ve been using it for a year and found out that it could get a bit of improvement and a layer of new paint.
So for the next version of Simple History the whole email gets a bit of new polish. Better copy, a clearer layout, icons, and data that is actually scannable.
Here’s a sneak peek of what’s coming:
A summary in plain words at the top
Before you get to any numbers, the email now tells you in one sentence how the week went:
Your site logged 789 events, compared with 480 the week before. Pär was the most active user.
It is written from actual website data, so it says something different (and real!) every week.
Links, links, everybody gets a link!
Yes! More links! Every section and number is now a link!
This is the change we are most happy about. All those numbers — total events, successful logins, failed logins, posts created, plugin activations — are now links. Click one and you land in the Simple History log, already filtered to exactly those events and to exactly that week. And the added and edited pages: also links!
Improved list of changed items
The old email showed a few recent events in each category. This probablt left you wondering (I did anyway!): is that everything, or are there more? Now every list tells you straight out — Most changed posts and pages · 5 of 79 — so you know whether the five you are looking at is the whole story.
Each section now has an icon, so you can find the part you care about by scrolling rather than by reading.
And each category now has a link at the bottom: “See posts and pages in the log”, “See plugin changes in the log”, “See failed logins in the log”.
Posts and pages grouped by post
Posts and pages get some extra attention, because on most sites that is what actually changes: someone edits a page, someone publishes a post, someone tweaks the same landing page four times in a row.
The list used to repeat the same page title once per edit. Now each post shows up once, with who touched it and how many times — “by WP-CLI and 3 others (7 edits)” — and the title itself is a link to that post’s own history, where you can see the actual content diffs.
Icons and a calmer layout
Plugin changes are collected per plugin, with versions, instead of one line per event.
Using the weekly email and have feedback? Let us know!
If you use the weekly email feature and have feedback, please let us know. Feedback from real users is really the best after all 🙂
You can find our contact info over at the support page.