UPDATE 2: WordFence has a new constant that can be added to your wp-config.php file to disable the live traffic feed. Add the following line to your wp-config.php file
define(‘WORDFENCE_DISABLE_LIVE_TRAFFIC’, true);
UPDATE: WordFence has removed the Live Traffic View feature and it is no longer available. I wrote a post about WordFence’s new Security Only feature that replaced Live Traffic View. It goes into more detail about what the feature is and whether or not you should use it on your website.
WordFence is a popular and comprehensive security plugin. If you are looking for a security plugin, I recommend downloading the premium version here. For the free version, you can download it here.
Today let’s dig into WordFence and its settings. If you currently use WordFence, there is a strong chance you have not looked at it’s complex settings page. By default, WordFence enables a feature called “live traffic view.” This allows you to visually see various data from your website visitors.
This data is collected on anyone who visits the website. While, the feature is super cool, it is also a drain from a performance point of view. Especially on poor hosting environments or on websites that have a lot of traffic (think couple hundred views a day is where you’d start to see a performance impact). The developers have made great strides in terms of performance. For example making sure it is as optimized as possible and using as few resources as possible. However, it can still be a major drain on your host.
This is apparent when you have a lot of traffic. Ultimately, the feature is worthless. You are never going to be staring at the live traffic feed unless you have a suspicion you are under attack. Examples of attacks would be DDoS or BruteForce attacks. I have personally never found a need to use the feature and always disable it on any site that I find it on.
To Disable the Live Traffic Feed in WordFence, Follow the Below Steps.
- Make sure you’re logged into the WordPress admin panel (as an administrator (or super admin if you’re on multisite)).
- Scroll down and hover over the WordFence link until you see the all options menu item appear.
- Click all options and scroll all the way down to the end of the page.
- Underneath tool options click on the live traffic view and where it says Enable Live Traffic Logging. Click it to turn it off.
Now your website will consume fewer resources. You do not sacrifice any of the security benefits of WordFence, by turning off live traffic view. If you have any questions, just let me know below!
Hi, it looks like this option had disappeared in the latest Wordfence version. I can only choose between security only and all traffic.
This option was indeed removed, I recommend you select the security only option it’s essentially using near 0 resources on your web server as it only logs security threats which WordFence previously did anyway.
According to the Wordfence help section, it’s recommends to pick “Security only” since it helps “to reduce the load on your web server.” It only logs things like “successful logins, login attempts and various types of blocked hits.”
Yes, the security only option is the only option now since the ability to disable it was removed. However, the security only won’t harm your webserver in terms of overloading it. The reason for this is it only updates the live feed with actual security issues IE if WordFence blocks a known spammer, or possible SQL Injection, etc. These are things that WordFence already tracked so now they have a visible home in the live traffic feed.
Thanks for this information.