Help docs

How to see visitors, post views and AI traffic in WordPress

Plain answers and setup steps for the free SwiftWebDev Dashboard plugin. See who visits your site, check WordPress post views right in your Posts list, find visitors from ChatGPT and the AI bots that crawl your pages, test the speed of any page and get a weekly traffic email. License and billing help for SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO is at the end.

Version 1.1.0No account neededWordPress 6.5 or laterPHP 7.4 or later

Download free on WordPress.org What the plugin does

Most asked questions

Who visits my WordPress site?How many views does each post get?Does ChatGPT send me visitors?Which AI bots crawl my site?How fast is this page?Can I get my stats by email?

Part 1

Get set up

Two minutes from install to your first numbers.

How to install and set up the plugin

Short answer: install SwiftWebDev Dashboard & Analytics from Plugins > Add New Plugin, activate it and open SwiftWebDev in the left admin menu. There is no account, license key or API key to set up.

WordPress Dashboard Plugin: Install and Set Up SwiftWebDevWatch on YouTube Watch all tutorials

Read the transcript

Your WordPress dashboard, rebuilt in under a minute. SwiftWebDev Dashboard and Analytics is a free WordPress plugin. It adds one clean home screen to your admin, so you see your visitors, your site speed, and your site health in one place. Visitor stats are cookieless, and stay in your own database. Google PageSpeed scores for mobile and desktop run with one click, for any page, with no API key.

Updates and Health shows anything that is out of date. Your site's front end only gets one small counter script, after the page has loaded. Everything here is free, with no license key. Extra reports come from a separate add-on, SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO. To install it, open Plugins in your WordPress admin, and click Add Plugin. Search for SwiftWebDev Dashboard, click Install Now, then Activate.

Now look at the left menu. The plugin adds one item, called SwiftWebDev. Click it to open your new dashboard. Your site logo and name sit at the top, and the menu keeps this modern style on every admin page. Only administrators get the new look. The header search jumps to any admin screen, post, or page. Next to it are notifications, shortcuts to Speed and Optimize and Quick Links, pending updates, and help.

On the right is your user menu. It holds Speed and Optimize, Quick Links, and SwiftWebDev Dashboard settings. Click settings. Open SwiftWebDev Dashboard after login shows this dashboard instead of the WordPress dashboard. It is off by default, so turn it on if you want this screen first. Do not count logged-in users is on by default. It keeps your own visits, and your team's, out of the visitor stats.

Menu name and Menu logo set the top of the left menu. By default they use your site title and site icon. Choose image picks a new logo, and a square image works best. Use default switches back. Save changes stays greyed out until you change something. Click it, and a message confirms your settings are saved. Want the classic WordPress dashboard? Open your user menu, and choose Classic WordPress dashboard.

It always works, even with the after login setting on. That is it. Install, open SwiftWebDev, and choose your settings. Next: every dashboard card, explained. Subscribe for more SwiftWebDev Dashboard tutorials.

The plugin needs WordPress 6.5 or later and PHP 7.4 or later. Everything in the free plugin works without a license key or time limit.

Install the plugin

In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins > Add New Plugin and search for SwiftWebDev Dashboard.
Choose Install Now, then Activate. You can also download the plugin from WordPress.org and upload the zip file under Plugins > Add New Plugin > Upload Plugin.
A one-time welcome screen asks if you want this dashboard as your home screen. Choose Yes, make it my default or Keep the WordPress dashboard. Its Email me a weekly site report box is ticked, so clear it if you do not want the email.
Open SwiftWebDev in the left admin menu any time.
Optional: open your user menu at the top right, choose SwiftWebDev Dashboard settings and set your own menu logo and name.

Your first visit

The dashboard is for administrators. Visitor stats start with the next visit to your site, so the numbers fill in over the coming days. For administrators, the WordPress admin menu also gets a matching modern style on every admin page. Other users see the normal WordPress admin.

Find your way around

Left admin menu: SwiftWebDev opens your dashboard. With an active PRO license, it has two items: Dashboard and Analytics.
Header: search your posts, pages, media, users and admin screens, see update notifications, and open Speed & Optimize, Quick Links, Updates and this help page with one click.
User menu at the top right: Speed & Optimize, Quick Links and SwiftWebDev Dashboard settings, plus Your profile, View site, Classic WordPress dashboard and Log out. With the PRO add-on installed, License is here too.
WordPress toolbar: how many people are on your site right now, and a search icon on every admin page.

Open the dashboard after login

By default, WordPress opens its normal dashboard after you log in. To open SwiftWebDev Dashboard instead, open your user menu, choose SwiftWebDev Dashboard settings, turn on Open SwiftWebDev Dashboard after login and choose Save changes.

Use the classic WordPress dashboard

The WordPress Dashboard menu item is not changed, so the normal WordPress dashboard is always one click away. You can also open your user menu and choose Classic WordPress dashboard.

Part 2

See your traffic

Visitors, post views, AI visitors and AI bots, counted on your own site.

How to see who visits your WordPress site

Short answer: open SwiftWebDev in the admin menu. The dashboard shows visitors, page views and sessions for the last 7, 30 or 90 days, plus your top pages, the websites that send you visitors and the devices people use. It counts visits without cookies and never stores who a visitor is.

WordPress Dashboard Widgets Explained | SwiftWebDevWatch on YouTube

Read the transcript

Every card on your new dashboard, and what it tells you. SwiftWebDev Dashboard and Analytics builds your home screen from eleven cards. Visitor stats come first, then speed and shortcuts, then updates and recent activity. The first six cards are your visitor stats, counted without cookies: Visitors, Page Views and Sessions, then Visitors over time, Busiest days and Engagement. Hover the small i on a number card for a one line definition.

The period picker at the top switches every visitor card between the last seven, thirty or ninety days. Each number card shows a trend line and the change against the period before. The next video covers these cards in depth. Speed scores shows your latest Google PageSpeed performance score for mobile and desktop. Click Run test to measure your homepage again. To check another page of your site, enter its address under Test another page, and the test runs on the Speed and Optimize screen.

No API key needed. Potential speed improvement areas lists the three changes that would help your mobile score the most, biggest impact first. Open Speed and Optimize for the full report. Quick Links holds the shortcuts you pinned, one click each. The gear icon opens the Quick Links screen, where you choose them. Updates and Health checks WordPress, plugins, themes and your PHP version, with a status on every row.

The pill at the top says All good, or Needs attention. If Site Health has not run yet, click Run checks. Recent Activity lists the latest changes: published posts and pages, new users, and WordPress, plugin and theme updates, with how long ago each one happened. Below the cards, one notice describes SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO, an optional add-on. Everything you use today stays free.

Click Maybe later, or the close button, and the notice stays hidden for thirty days. To choose what you see, click Customize. Untick a card to hide it, then click Save. Show all ticks every card again before you save. It only changes your own view. To reorder, grab the handle on any card and drag it. The new order saves on its own. You can also focus the handle and press the up or down arrow key.

Reset layout, in the Customize panel, puts the default order back. That is every card, explained and arranged your way. Next: cookieless visitor stats in depth. Subscribe for more SwiftWebDev Dashboard tutorials.

The visitor cards

Visitors, Page Views and Sessions: the total for the period, a small daily trend line and the change compared with the previous period.
Visitors over time: visitors and page views for each day of the period.
Busiest days: average visitors on each day of the week, with your busiest day highlighted.
Engagement: pages per visit, visits per visitor, visitors per day and your best day.
Top pages: the pages people view most.
Referrers: other websites that send you visitors. Direct visits are not listed here.
Devices: visits from phones, tablets and computers.

Choose the period

Use the period menu at the top of the dashboard to pick Last 7 days, Last 30 days or Last 90 days. The visitor cards follow the period you pick. The dashboard opens with the last 30 days.

See who is on your site right now

The WordPress toolbar shows how many people are online, meaning visitors seen in the last 5 minutes. Point at it or click it to see today’s visitors, page views, AI visits, top pages and sources. It shows on every admin page and on your site while you are logged in. To hide it, turn off Show live visitors in the toolbar in SwiftWebDev Dashboard settings.

A visitor counter on the classic dashboard

The plugin also adds a small SwiftWebDev Dashboard box to the classic WordPress dashboard with visitors today, in the last 7 days and in the last 30 days, and your top 3 pages of the week. It is for administrators only. It is not a public counter on your site.

Counts, not identities. The plugin counts visits. It does not save IP addresses, names or anything else that tells you who a visitor is. Read how to read the numbers for how this works.

How to see post views in WordPress

Short answer: go to Posts > All Posts and look at the Views column. It shows the page views of each post in the last 30 days. Your Pages list has the same column.

Install and activate the plugin. There is nothing else to turn on.
Open Posts > All Posts or Pages > All Pages.
Read the Views column next to each title. A dash means no views in the last 30 days.

Views count from the moment the plugin is active. There is no code to add to your theme and no counter shown to visitors. Only administrators see the column.

Views for a longer period

The column always covers the last 30 days. For the last 7 or 90 days, open the dashboard, pick the period and read the Top pages card.

When the column shows a dash

The post had no views in the last 30 days.
The post is a draft or is not published yet.
Your site uses plain permalinks (addresses like ?p=123). Views are matched by the post address, so they need a permalink structure other than Plain under Settings > Permalinks.

How to see ChatGPT and AI traffic

Short answer: open the dashboard and look at the AI visitors card. It counts people who clicked a link to your site in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and 6 more assistants, with their share of all visits and the change from the previous period.

A visit counts as AI traffic when it arrives from an AI assistant, either through the referring address or the utm_source tag some assistants add to their links (ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com). Each visit is counted once, on your own site, without cookies.

Why the number is a minimum

Some apps open links without a referring address or a utm_source tag. A link copied out of ChatGPT and pasted into a browser looks the same. Those visits count as direct visits, so the real AI number is higher.
Google does not mark clicks from AI Overviews or AI Mode. They arrive as normal Google search visits and show under Referrers as Google, the same as in Google Analytics.

For the full walkthrough, read how to see ChatGPT and AI traffic in WordPress. To see which pages AI visitors land on and which goals they complete, SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO adds an AI & Search tab.

Which AI bots crawl your site (GPTBot, ClaudeBot and more)

Short answer: the AI crawlers card on the dashboard lists every AI company whose bots visited your site, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Meta, Amazon and Apple, with how often they came, why, and the last day each was seen.

What the purposes mean

Each bot visit is sorted by purpose. OpenAI runs three bots, and other companies work the same way:

Bot	What it does	Shown as
GPTBot	Collects pages to train AI models	Training
OAI-SearchBot	Indexes pages for ChatGPT search answers	AI search
ChatGPT-User	Opens a page when someone asks ChatGPT to	Asked by a user

The card puts AI bot visits next to AI visitors, so you see how much AI reads and how many people it sends.

Check whether your robots.txt blocks AI

The AI access check card reads your robots.txt and shows, for each AI company, whether its AI search and training crawlers are allowed or blocked. When AI search is blocked, it warns you, because those assistants then cannot show your pages in answers. It also shows whether your site has an llms.txt file.

The check is read-only. It never changes your robots.txt and it does not create an llms.txt file.
It reads robots.txt only. A block at your host, firewall or CDN is not visible to it.
If Discourage search engines from indexing this site is on in Settings > Reading, the card tells you, because WordPress then asks every crawler to stay away.

Should you block AI crawlers?

It is your choice. Blocking training crawlers keeps your pages out of AI model training. Blocking AI search crawlers keeps your pages out of AI answers, which also means those assistants cannot link to you.

Counts are a floor, and names can be faked. Bots are recognized by the name they send, which is not proof of identity. When a cache plugin or your host answers a request before WordPress runs, the visit cannot be counted, and the card says the counts are a minimum. The plugin stores only a daily total per bot, with no IP address, user agent or page address.

How to get a weekly traffic email

Short answer: turn on Email a weekly site report in SwiftWebDev Dashboard settings. Every Monday morning you get last week’s visitors, top pages, AI visits and speed scores, compared with the week before. It is free and off until you turn it on.

Open your user menu at the top right and choose SwiftWebDev Dashboard settings.
Turn on Email a weekly site report.
Under Send the report to, enter an email address, or leave it empty to use the site admin email.
Choose Save changes.
Choose Send a test report now and check that it arrives.

What is in the email

Visitors, page views and sessions, with the change from the week before.
Your top pages and top referrers.
AI visitors and AI bot visits.
Your latest mobile and desktop speed scores.
Pending updates and your Site Health status.

The email goes out every Monday at 8:00 in your site’s time zone. It is sent from your own site with WordPress mail, so no data goes to an outside service. To stop it, turn off Email a weekly site report.

Test says WordPress could not send the email? Your site cannot send mail yet. Many hosts need an SMTP plugin before WordPress mail is delivered.

How to read your visitor and post view numbers

Short answer: visitors are unique people in the period, page views are every page opened, and sessions are separate visits. Each number shows the change from the previous period of the same length.

What is counted

Visitors: unique people who visited your site in the period.
Page views: every page that was opened, including repeat views of the same page. The Views column on your Posts list uses this number.
Sessions: separate visits to your site. A visit ends after 30 minutes without activity, so one person can have several sessions.
AI visitors are part of your visitors. AI bot visits are counted on their own, in the AI crawlers card.

How visits are counted without cookies

The plugin does not use cookies or browser storage. Each visit is identified by a one-way hash of the IP address and browser, combined with a random value that changes every day. This means a visitor cannot be followed from one day to the next. IP addresses and browser details are never saved.

Logged-in users are left out

Visits by anyone logged in to WordPress, such as you and your team, are not counted by default. You can change this in SwiftWebDev Dashboard settings with Do not count logged-in users.

Why the numbers differ from Google Analytics

Every tool counts in its own way. Google Analytics depends on its own script and cookie settings, and it may count you and your team. This plugin counts on your own site and leaves logged-in users out. The totals will not match, so compare trends inside one tool. If you want stats without Google Analytics at all, read WordPress analytics without Google Analytics.

How long the data is kept

Raw visit records are deleted after 48 hours. Daily totals are kept for 180 days: the longest period shown (90 days) plus the 90 days before it for the comparison. Daily counts per page, referring website and device type are kept for 90 days, and daily counts per AI assistant for 180 days. All of this stays in your own WordPress database.

Will it slow down my site? The counter is a small script that sends one request per page view after the page has loaded. WordPress also checks the browser name of each request for known AI bots. Everything else happens in the admin area.

Part 3

Speed and everyday tools

PageSpeed tests, shortcuts, search and your own branding.

How to test the speed of any page

Short answer: open Speed & Optimize from your user menu and choose Run test. Your homepage is tested with Google PageSpeed for mobile and desktop. To test another page of your site, enter its address under Test another page. No Google API key is needed.

Open your user menu at the top right and choose Speed & Optimize.
Choose Run test to test your homepage.
To test another page, enter its full address under Test another page and choose Test.
Use Showing results for to switch between your homepage and that page.

Scores and Core Web Vitals

For each test you see the Performance, Accessibility, Best practices and SEO scores, and your Core Web Vitals from the lab test. When Google has enough Chrome visitors for your site, real-user data from the Chrome UX Report is shown as well. Your latest homepage scores also appear on the dashboard. For a walkthrough of what the scores mean, read how to check your PageSpeed score in WordPress.

Potential speed improvement areas

Below the scores, Potential speed improvement areas lists what to fix, ranked by impact, to reach 90 or more on both mobile and desktop.

The plugin does not change your site. It measures and shows you what to improve. It does not optimize images, clear caches, clean your database or change any file or setting.

Why no API key is needed

Tests run through the SwiftWebDev speed test service (swdashapi.swiftoutbox.com). It checks that the page belongs to your site, then asks Google PageSpeed Insights to test it with its own Google API key. A request is sent only when an administrator runs a test. It contains your site address, the address of the page to test and the test type. No visitor data is sent. The result is kept in memory for up to 10 minutes, so a repeat test returns quickly, and is never saved to disk or a database.

Limits

You can run up to 10 tests per 10 minutes.
Only pages of your own site can be tested.
Google can only test websites that are reachable on the public internet. A site that runs only on your own computer cannot be tested, so run the test on your live site.

How to use quick links and admin search

Short answer: quick links are shortcuts to the WordPress tasks you use most. Pin them to the dashboard. The search in the dashboard header and the toolbar finds posts, pages, drafts, media, users and admin screens from anywhere in the admin.

WordPress Admin Dashboard: Quick Links, Menu & Site HealthWatch on YouTube

Read the transcript

The WordPress shortcuts you will use every day. Quick Links is the shortcut card on your dashboard. Each tile opens a WordPress task in one click, like adding a post or running updates. The gear on the card opens your shortcuts. The Quick Links screen lists every shortcut, grouped into Content, Design, Plugins and users, Tools, and Settings. Pinned shortcuts sit at the top, in the same order as your dashboard card.

Click the pin on a tile to add it to your dashboard, and again to unpin it. Drag a pinned tile by its handle, or use the arrow keys. Hide the shortcuts you never use. They move to Hidden shortcuts at the bottom, and Show brings one back. Search shortcuts matches names and descriptions. Restore defaults shows everything again and pins the recommended set. Changes save on their own, and each user keeps their own list.

SwiftWebDev Dashboard also restyles the WordPress admin menu on every admin page, with your logo and site name at the top and one SwiftWebDev item. Administrators get the new look, other users keep the normal admin. On every SwiftWebDev Dashboard screen, the header search finds admin pages, plugin screens, posts and pages. Use the arrow keys and Enter to open a result. Next to it: update notifications, shortcuts to Speed and Optimize and Quick Links, an updates count, and help.

The user menu holds settings, your profile, View site, and the classic WordPress dashboard. Back on the dashboard, Updates and Health checks five things. WordPress, plugins and themes show pending updates, with an Update button. PHP version shows your version, and the recommended one when you are behind. Site Health shows how many checks passed, and how many are recommended or critical.

Not run yet? Click Run checks. The badge on the card says All good, or Needs attention. Recent Activity shows what changed: posts and pages published, new users, plugins activated, deactivated or updated, theme and WordPress updates, and new WooCommerce orders. It records from the day the plugin was activated. That is the admin toolkit: shortcuts, a cleaner admin, and site health at a glance.

It completes the free series. Find every video in the playlist, and see SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO for deeper reports. Subscribe for more SwiftWebDev Dashboard tutorials.

Quick links

Open Quick Links from your user menu to see every shortcut. Each user keeps their own list.

Pin: choose Pin to dashboard on a shortcut. Pinned shortcuts appear in the Quick Links card on your dashboard. Choose it again to unpin.
Reorder: drag pinned shortcuts into the order you want, or move focus to a move handle and use the arrow keys.
Hide: choose Hide to move a shortcut to Hidden shortcuts. Choose Show to bring it back.
Search: type in Search shortcuts to find a task quickly.
Restore: choose Restore defaults to show every shortcut again and pin the recommended ones.

Admin search

Click the search bar in the dashboard header and start typing. It finds posts and pages in any status, drafts too, plus media, users and admin screens. Before you type, it shows your recent items and quick actions. Your recent items are saved to your account, so they follow you to another browser.

On other admin pages, use the search icon next to your name in the WordPress toolbar. To hide it, turn off Show search in the toolbar in SwiftWebDev Dashboard settings.

How to customize the dashboard, logo and menu

Short answer: drag cards to reorder them, choose Customize to hide the ones you do not need, and set your own menu logo and name in SwiftWebDev Dashboard settings.

The other cards on your dashboard

Speed scores: your latest mobile and desktop performance scores for your homepage.
Potential speed improvement areas: the three changes that would help your mobile score the most.
AI visitors, AI crawlers and AI access check: see AI traffic and AI bots.
Quick Links: the shortcuts you pinned.
Updates and health: pending WordPress, plugin and theme updates, your PHP version with the recommended version, and your Site Health status.
Recent activity: published posts and pages, new users, WordPress, plugin and theme updates, plugins turned on or off, and new WooCommerce orders.

There are no locked or blurred cards. Every card in the free plugin shows your real data.

Reorder, hide and reset cards

Reorder: drag any card to a new spot. With a keyboard, move focus to the card’s move handle and press the up and down arrow keys. Cards change order only; they cannot be resized.
Hide: choose Customize, pick which cards appear and choose Save. Choose Show all to bring back every hidden card.
Reset: in the Customize panel, choose Reset layout to put the cards back in their default order.

Your layout is saved for your user account only.

Your logo and name in the admin menu

Open SwiftWebDev Dashboard settings from your user menu:

Menu logo: the image at the top of the left menu. Your site icon is used by default. Choose Choose image to pick your own, or Use default to go back. A square image works best.
Menu name: the name shown next to the logo, up to 40 characters. Your site title is used by default.

Choose Save changes when you are done. Only administrators see the styled menu.

The PRO add-on banner

At the end of the dashboard, one banner describes the optional PRO add-on. Choose Maybe later or the close button to hide it for 30 days. It appears only on the dashboard, and never while a PRO license is active.

Part 4

PRO, billing and help

Activate a license, manage billing and fix common problems.

How to activate SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO

Short answer: download PRO from your account page, upload it as a plugin, then paste your license key under License in your user menu and choose Activate. The free plugin must stay active.

SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO is a separate add-on plugin for real-time visitors, goals, campaigns and deeper reports. The free plugin works fully on its own.

Activate your license

Sign in to your account page, copy your license key and download SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO.
Keep SwiftWebDev Dashboard & Analytics active, because PRO needs it. Then go to Plugins > Add New Plugin > Upload Plugin, upload the PRO zip file and activate it.
Choose Enter license key in the notice that appears, or open the user menu at the top right and choose License.
Paste your license key. It looks like SD-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX.
Choose Activate.

After activation, Analytics appears under SwiftWebDev in the left menu and the PRO cards appear on your dashboard. PRO tracking starts after activation. Your PRO history starts from that day; earlier visits are not added.

The Analytics screen

Open SwiftWebDev > Analytics. The screen has these tabs:

Overview: visitors, page views, sessions and new visitors, traffic sources, top pages, top referrers, devices, countries, form submissions, clicks and conversion rate. Choose Customize to hide cards, and drag cards to reorder them.
Real-time: active visitors now, visitors per minute, pages being viewed and the latest activity.
Audience: countries, new and returning visitors, device types, browsers and operating systems.
Behavior: average visit length, bounce rate, visit length and pages per visit.
Pages: all your pages with their views and average time on the page.
Sources: where visits come from: search, social, other sites or direct.
AI & Search: AI bot visits next to AI visitors, the pages AI assistants send people to, and goals completed by AI visitors.
Campaigns: visits from links tagged with utm_source, utm_medium or utm_campaign, grouped by campaign.
Goals: completions, visitors and conversion rate for each goal.
Forms: successful submissions for each form. Only form names and submit events are recorded, never what visitors type.
Clicks: links to other sites, downloads, email and phone links are counted automatically. To count any other element, add the attribute data-swiftdash-track="label" with a short label.
Session recordings: replays of real visits, with private fields hidden.
Bots: known crawlers and suspected bots. Bot visits are left out of your other reports.
Events: on-site searches, videos and your own custom events. Send a custom event from your site with window.swiftdash.track('event_name', value). Names use lowercase letters, numbers and underscores, up to 40 characters.

Add a goal

On the Goals tab, choose Add goal, give it a name and pick when a visitor completes it: Visits a page, Clicks a link or button, Submits a form or Custom event. You can have up to 20 goals. Goal results cover the last 30 days at most.

Track a campaign

Add utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign to the links you share in emails, ads and posts. A visit counts for a campaign when its first page has one of these tags in the link. Open the Campaigns tab to see the results.

Date ranges and export

Pick Last 24 hours, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 90 days or a Custom range. Choose Export report to download the current tab as a CSV file. Export is available on every tab except Real-time and Session recordings.

Session recordings

Session recording is off until you turn it on. Open License from your user menu, turn on Record visitor sessions and choose Save changes. Every form field is masked in the visitor’s browser, so typed text never leaves it. Password fields are never recorded. To hide anything else, add the class swiftdash-block to that element. Each recording stops after 15 minutes per page view.

Check consent first. Recordings can need visitor consent in some countries. Check your privacy policy and cookie notice before you turn recordings on.

Traffic spike and AI alerts

On the License screen, the Email alerts card has Email me when traffic spikes. Pick when to alert (2, 3 or 5 times your usual visitors per day over the last 14 days) and where to send it. It checks every hour and sends at most one email a day. A day needs at least 20 visitors to count as a spike. Under AI & Search alerts you can also get an email when an AI bot visits for the first time, when an AI bot reads a page your robots.txt asks it to skip, or when AI visitors spike.

Scheduled speed tests

On the Speed & Optimize screen, the Scheduled tests and score history card lists your monitored pages. Choose Add page to add a page of your site, up to 10 pages. Each one is tested every week on mobile and desktop, with a score history. Choose Test now to test a page right away. You get an email when a performance score drops by 10 points or more, or falls below 90.

PRO license and billing help

Short answer: your license key, downloads, renewals and invoices live on your account page. Sign in with the email you used at checkout. Plans and prices are on the PRO page.

Plans

SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO is a yearly license. Every plan has every PRO feature; plans differ only in how many sites they cover: 1 site, 5 sites or unlimited sites. See the PRO plans and prices.

Get your license key

License keys are not sent by email. After you buy, you get an order confirmation email. Then:

Open the account page and enter the email you used at checkout.
Open the one-time sign-in link that is emailed to you.
Show and copy your key, and download SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO.

Replace a leaked key

If someone else has your key, sign in to your account and choose to generate a new key. The old key stops working at once, and sites that use it are deactivated. Activate the new key on your own sites.

Move a license to another site

On the old site, open License from your user menu and choose Deactivate on this site.
On the new site, enter the same key and choose Activate.

Payments, renewals and upgrades

Payments are handled by Creem, the merchant of record. Creem adds VAT or sales tax where applicable and sends your receipts and invoices. Your license renews automatically each year until you cancel. To cancel, open your account page and choose Manage billing and invoices; PRO keeps working until the end of the term you paid for. When you need more sites, choose Renew or upgrade on your account page. If a renewal is due, the Renew license button takes you to your renewal page.

A SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO plan is a software license only. It does not include WordPress development, design, setup or any other service from Swift Web Dev. Those services are quoted and billed separately.

Refunds

You can get a full refund within 14 days of purchase, or within 14 days of a renewal or upgrade charge. Read the refund policy for how to ask.

When a license expires

Data collection and session recording stop on the day the license expires.
The Analytics screen and the PRO dashboard cards are removed, and a notice in your WordPress admin offers a Renew license button.
Your stored PRO data is kept for 30 days. Renew within 30 days and all of it comes back.
After 30 days without renewal, the data is deleted.

The free plugin keeps working as before, including its own visitor stats.

What data the plugin stores

Short answer: the free plugin sets no cookies, never saves IP addresses and keeps its counts in your own WordPress database. Nothing is sent to AI companies or to any analytics service.

Visitor stats: no cookies or browser storage. Raw visit records for 48 hours, daily totals for 180 days, daily counts per page, referrer and device type for 90 days, daily counts per AI assistant for 180 days.
AI crawlers: a daily total per AI bot, kept for 180 days. No IP address, user agent or requested address is stored.
AI access check: reads /robots.txt and /llms.txt from your own site, at most once every 12 hours while an administrator views the dashboard.
Speed tests: your site address and the tested page address go to the SwiftWebDev speed test service, which asks Google PageSpeed Insights to test it. The result is held in memory for up to 10 minutes and never saved.
Weekly email: sent from your own site with WordPress mail.
SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO: visitor events are sent to the PRO server only after you activate a license. Country is looked up from the IP address with MaxMind GeoLite2 when the visit is collected, then the IP address is discarded. Form values are never sent, and session recordings run only if you turn them on.
After a PRO license ends: collection stops, and data is kept for 30 days, then deleted unless you renew.

Whether your site needs a cookie or consent notice depends on everything else on your site and on where your visitors live, so check it for your own site. This page is not legal advice. Read the full details in the privacy policy.

Troubleshooting: common questions

Why are no visits showing on my dashboard?

Stats start with the next visit after you install the plugin, so give it some time. Logged-in users are not counted by default, so log out or use a private browser window to test. PRO reports start on the day you activate your license.

Why does the Views column show a dash?

A dash means no page views in the last 30 days. Views are matched by the post address, so drafts and sites with plain permalinks show a dash. Pick a permalink structure other than Plain under Settings > Permalinks.

Why does some ChatGPT traffic show as direct?

Some apps open links without a referring address or a utm_source tag. Those visits cannot be told apart from people who typed your address, so they count as direct visits. Your AI visitor count is a minimum.

Why are AI crawler counts lower than my server logs?

Page caching. When a cache plugin or your host answers a request before WordPress runs, the plugin cannot count it, and the card says the counts are a minimum. Your cache settings may let you exclude AI bots, often called rejected user agents.

Why is my weekly email not arriving?

Choose Send a test report now in the plugin settings. If it says WordPress could not send the email, your site cannot send mail yet; an SMTP plugin usually fixes that. Also check your spam folder. WordPress runs scheduled tasks when someone visits your site, so on a quiet site the Monday email can arrive later than 8:00.

Why does a speed test show an error?

You can run up to 10 tests per 10 minutes, so wait a few minutes and try again. Google can only test sites on the public internet, so run the test on your live site. Only pages on your own site address can be tested, for example https://example.com/about/.

Why can I not find Analytics in the menu?

The Analytics screen is part of SwiftWebDev Dashboard PRO. It appears under SwiftWebDev only while a PRO license is active on the site. Open License from your user menu to check its status.

A notice says my PRO license has expired. What now?

Your license has expired, so PRO reports and tracking are switched off. Choose Renew license. If you renew within 30 days, all your data comes back.

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