Are you curious about usage tracking in WC Vendors? Usage tracking helps our team to better understand our users and their website needs by looking at a range of variables in their WC Vendors plugins, WordPress, and web host.
This information allows us to continuously improve our product as well as our QA/testing process. In this article, we’ve shared the details that WC Vendors collects through usage tracking and why we track this information.
Important
The only sensitive data we store is the site URL and email address of the opted-in WordPress user. We do not track or store any personal or business-critical data neither from you nor your site users. We keep track of the name and email address simply to get in touch regarding potential issues or updates that would be relevant to you. Tracking data is automatically sent to our servers once you opt-in and then every 7 days thenceforth (for as long as the plugin is active or you choose to opt-out).
What Is Tracked & Why?
Below is the list of information that WC Vendors collect as part of the usage tracking:
WC Vendors
- Versions and activation status of WC Vendors plugins – So we know which versions of each of our WC Vendors plugins are potentially responsible for issues when we get bug reports, allowing us to identify issues and release solutions much faster.
- License details & activation status (paid customers only) – if you’re a WC Vendors customer, then we use this to determine if there’s an issue with your specific license key, and to link the profile of your site with the configuration to allow us to determine if there’s issues with your WC Vendors configuration.
- WC Vendors plugin settings – Know which settings people are using allows us to determine potentially which new settings or areas of WC Vendors people want us to expand on, and which settings people aren’t using so we can make the interfaces more streamlined and usable.
- Usage tracking config – The WC Vendors option that contains the information on when the usage tracking data-sync will happen (once a week), so we can gauge the server load for the usage tracking servers.
- Effectiveness stats – Anonymized statistical data relating to the effectiveness of vendor orders and your marketplace. This data is viewed in aggregate and not personally identifiable to your site.
WordPress
- Theme/Plugin names and versions – So we know which themes and plugins to support and test against. WC Vendors runs on over 6k websites. While we can’t test with all 50,000+ plugins in the WordPress/WooCommerce universe, we do our best to test against the top plugins and themes from this list.
- Site and user count and is multisite – This allows us to gauge how important it is to support specific types of multisite like multi-network and similar styles of configuration and gauge how much we need to scale our servers before launching features. Knowing the sub-site count helps us ensure WC Vendors scale properly for large networks.
- Locale – We want WC Vendors to be accessible to everyone, and knowing the site’s locale helps us focus our translation efforts.
- Timezone – We have users across the globe, so knowing the densities within various time zones helps us provide the best support coverage possible.
- Site URL – The website address allows us to properly store usage tracking records so that we can avoid duplicated details.
- WordPress/WooCommerce versions – knowing which versions of WordPress and WooCommerce our customers are using helps us better tune compatibility with differences in those particular versions. It also helps us identify gaps in our testing/QA processes.
Server
- PHP and MySQL Versions – These details help us make sure our testing procedures have proper coverage to avoid compatibility issues.
- Server Software – This reports if the web server software is Apache, Nginx, or similar, which is used for testing purposes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do I opt into (or out of) usage tracking?
The answer to this question depends on whether you’re using the paid or free version of WC Vendors.
If you have a paid license with WC Vendors, then you will be default be opted into usage tracking. To disable this, please reach out to support and they will happily help out.
If you’re using WC Vendors (free plugin) and would like to enable usage tracking so that our team can keep making our product better, then please go to WC Vendors > Settings > Advanced. On this screen, you’ll need to check the Allow Usage Tracking checkbox.