# How to read the activity log

> A running record of what xSpeed did and why — every purge with its cause and file count, every settings change with its old and new value.

- Category: Tools
- Canonical: https://xspeedcache.com/docs/logs/

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When a site suddenly behaves differently, the useful question is *what changed?* This panel answers it. Every cache purge, every settings change, and every scheduled cleanup is recorded with a timestamp, a cause, and — where relevant — the old and new values.

> **Where to find it**
>
> 1. In your WordPress admin, click **xSpeed Cache** in the left menu.
> 2. In the xSpeed Cache sidebar, open the **Tools** group.
> 3. Click the **Logs** card.
>
> *Shortcut: open `wp-admin/admin.php?page=xspeed#/tools/logs` directly.*
>
> ✅ This panel is part of **xSpeed Cache (Free)**.

![The activity log](https://xspeedcache.com/_astro/logs-list.BQE9eNCD.png)

1. **Scheduled maintenance** — garbage collection, with what it removed.
2. **Cache purges** — each with its cause and file count.
3. **Settings changes** — old value, new value, and where it came from.

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## Settings at a glance

This panel has no settings — it's a read-only record:

| Element | What it shows |
| --- | --- |
| **Entry list** | Newest first, with a relative timestamp. |
| **Severity dot** | Info, success, warning, or error. |
| **Message** | What happened, including cause and counts. |

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## How it works

The log is **capped at 50 entries**, newest first. Entry 51 pushes the oldest out. That makes it a record of *recent* activity rather than an audit trail — enough to answer "what changed this week?", not "what changed in March."

Each entry carries a timestamp, a type, a message and a severity. The coloured dot on the left encodes severity: **info** for routine events, **success**, **warn**, and **error** for things that need attention.

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## What gets recorded

Three broad kinds of event, all visible in the screenshot above:

**Scheduled maintenance** — *"Cache garbage collection (scheduled) — 1 expired file(s) removed"*. Routine background cleanup of expired cache files, with the count so you can see it's actually doing something.

**Cache purges, with their cause** — *"Cache purged (settings change) — 1 file removed"*, *"Cache purged (cdn settings change)"*, *"Render caches cleared (cdn settings change) — Elementor"*. This is the most useful part. A purge on its own tells you little; a purge annotated with *why* tells you whether something you did triggered it, or something else did.

**Settings changes, with old and new values** — *"CDN: Enable CDN on→off (via dashboard)"*, *"Speed Test: Provider gtmetrix→psi (via dashboard)"*. The `old→new` form and the `(via dashboard)` suffix together answer both *what* changed and *how* — a dashboard edit versus a WP-CLI command or an API call.

> 💡 **This is the fastest way to answer "why did my cache clear?"** Purges have many causes — publishing a post, changing a setting, a plugin update, a scheduled task. The log distinguishes them, which guesswork can't.

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## Reading it when something breaks

The panel is at its most valuable immediately after an unexplained change. A practical order:

1. **Look for a settings change near the time the behaviour changed.** The `old→new` values tell you exactly what moved.
2. **Check `(via dashboard)`.** If a change wasn't made in the dashboard, it came from WP-CLI, a REST call, or another integration — which narrows the culprit considerably on a site several people administer.
3. **Look at purge causes.** A purge annotated *(settings change)* right before a slowdown explains a cold cache far better than a hit-ratio graph does.

> ⚠️ **Fifty entries is not much on a busy site.** Scheduled garbage collection alone writes an entry per run. If you're investigating something from more than a few days ago, the evidence may already have rolled off — check the log early rather than after you've exhausted other theories.

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## Related

- [How to read your cache diagnostics](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/cache-diagnostics/)
- [How to enable Page Cache](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/page-cache/)
- [How to get support](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/help-support/)
- [How to import settings and profiles](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/migration/)
- [How to read your dashboard](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/overview/)