Sometimes, you want to make sure that a specific esssential plugin is never deleted on your WordPress website or at least you want to be notified when ever this happens.
Imagine you have a tax plugin that calculates the tax in your WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads shop system. If this plugin is disabled for a reason, all your purchase prices will be miscalculated and it can take a while until you recognize that.
There is no 100% protection to prevent a plugin from being disabled on your WordPress website, but when it happens, you can copy the following code into a mu-plugin like plugin-logger.php and add it to the folder wp-content/mu-plugins
<?php
/*
* Plugin Name: Log deleted plugins by WP Staging
* Plugin URI: https://wp-staging.com
* Description: Write a log file whenever a plugin is deleted or deactivated plugins.
*
* This is a must-use standalone plugin.
*
* Author: WP Staging
* Version: 1.0
* Author URI: https://wp-staging.com
*/
add_action('deactivated_plugin', function ($plugin_file) {
$datetime = date('d-m-Y H:i:s');
$message = "[{$datetime}] Deactivated plugin {$plugin_file}";
error_log(
"$message\n",
3,
WP_CONTENT_DIR . "/7263767234-deleted-plugins.log"
);
wp_mail('youremailaddress@example.com', 'Plugin deactivated on example.com', $message);
}, 20, 2);
add_action('deleted_plugin', function ($plugin_file, $deleted) {
if ($deleted) {
$datetime = date('d-m-Y H:i:s');
$message = "[{$datetime}] Deleted plugin {$plugin_file}";
error_log(
"[{$datetime}] Deleted plugin {$plugin_file}\n",
3,
WP_CONTENT_DIR . "/7263767234-deleted-plugins.log"
);
wp_mail('youremailaddress@example.com', 'Plugin deleted on example.com', $message);
}
}, 20, 2);Once any of the installed plugins is either disabled or deleted by the WordPress hooks deleted_plugin or deactivated_plugin you will get an email notification. It will also log the report in the file wp-content//7263767234-deleted-plugins.log.
I recommend to adjust the path and file name for security purposes.