Settings — General tab

The General tab controls how visits are captured. Every setting here affects what gets written to the {prefix}bp_profile_views table.

How views are counted

Choose when a second look at the same profile by the same viewer counts as a new view.

Option	Key + value	Behaviour
Once per login session, per day (recommended)	save_count_by = session	The same logged-in viewer visiting the same profile counts once within the same login session and calendar day. Dedupe key: user meta bp_profile_views_user_login_session plus the WordPress session token.
Once per referer	save_count_by = referer	Uses the HTTP Referer header and a cookie (BP_IS_USER) to detect re-visits. A bp_profile_views_referer_transient is set for 6 hours (21,600 seconds). Better for communities where members often sign out between visits.

Default: session.

Viewer types

Option	Key + value	Default	Effect
Exclude logged-out visitors from counts	exclude_logout_user_count = yes	Yes	Anonymous visits (viewer_id = 0) are still recorded in the table but are filtered out of the counts shown to members and admins. See Where this setting applies below. Turn it off to include anonymous traffic in totals.

Requests from known bots and crawlers (Googlebot, LinkedInBot, Facebot, curl, ahrefs, etc.) are rejected before a row is ever inserted, regardless of this setting. See the bp_profile_views_bot_user_agents filter if you need to adjust the list.

Where this setting applies

As of 1.5.3 every surface that shows an aggregate honours this setting:

Surface	Honours it
Views tab chart (member’s own profile)	Yes
Views tab visitor list	Yes
Members directory view-count badge	Yes
Admin → Members Views (7-day / 30-day / total columns)	Yes
Recent Visitor widget	Yes
Popular User widget	Yes
Admin → Overview → Total Views and Views Today	No — by design. These two cards are a raw row count of the table, so they always include anonymous visits.
Admin → Overview → Unique Viewers	No — always excludes anonymous, regardless of this setting, because an anonymous visitor has no identity to count.

If you turn the setting on and a number does not drop, check it against this table before reporting it: the Overview cards are intentionally exempt.

Prior to 1.5.3 several of these surfaces either inverted the setting or ignored it entirely, so counts disagreed with each other. If you are upgrading from an older version, expect the admin Members Views columns and the two widgets to change to match the rest.

Notifications

Option	Key + value	Default	Effect
Send a BuddyPress notification on each qualifying view	allow_user_notification = yes	Off	Fires a BuddyPress notification to the profile owner on each qualifying view, rate-limited to one notification per (viewer, recipient) pair per day. Requires the BuddyPress Notifications component to be active.

See View notifications for the full notification flow and how to change the rate-limit window.

Member control

Option	Key + value	Default	Effect
Let members opt out of being tracked	allow_user_settings = yes	Off	When on, each member gets a Record my visits to other profiles toggle. Members who turn it off stop their own visits from being recorded (the visitor_setting user meta is set to no). The toggle appears in two places: the Views sub-tab on their profile and the Settings → General page.

See Per-user opt-out for the full member-side flow.

Saving

The General tab submits through the standard WordPress register_setting / options.php flow. Every value is run through a typed sanitiser before update_option writes it:

• Enum settings (save_count_by) are validated against the allowed list (session, referer).
• Toggle settings are coerced to the string 'yes' or 'no'.

The sanitiser uses a sentinel mechanism so that saving the General tab does not overwrite keys owned by the Display tab (and vice versa).

Storage

All keys on this tab live in the single option bp_profile_views_general_options (a serialised PHP array). To inspect it:

wp option get bp_profile_views_general_options --format=json

Key reference

Key	Type	Default	Description
save_count_by	session | referer	session	Dedupe strategy.
exclude_logout_user_count	yes | no	yes	Whether anonymous (viewer_id = 0) rows are excluded from counts.
allow_user_notification	yes | no	no	Enable BuddyPress profile-view notifications.
allow_user_settings	yes | no	no	Show the per-member opt-out toggle.

Where to next

• Display tab — chart style, recent-visitors strip, directory badge, avatar size.
• Members Views tab — top-100 leaderboard.
• License tab — activate your license key.
• View tracking pipeline — detailed walkthrough of what gets recorded vs counted.