Trackdolphin – Server-Side Tracking for WooCommerce

Description

Trackdolphin reports what happens in your WooCommerce shop to the advertising and analytics platforms you use (Google Ads, Meta, GA4 and others) from the server, not from the browser. Ad blockers, Safari’s tracking prevention and abandoned redirects no longer swallow your conversions, and eligible purchases are reported with the value WooCommerce actually invoiced.

This plugin is an interface to the Trackdolphin service (serviceware). All functionality included in the plugin is available without restrictions: there is no license key, trial period or locked feature. It requires a Trackdolphin account (service pricing). The activation code only links your shop to its project in the dashboard; without that link, no data leaves your shop.

What the plugin does

• Reports paid orders (and refunds) from the server, with hashed match signals (e-mail, phone, name, address) in the format Google Ads and Meta expect. Value and line items come from the WooCommerce order, not from a data layer.
• Adds a small first-party script to the storefront that records page views, product views, add-to-cart, checkout start and payment info. The script talks to your own shop (/wp-json/trackdolphin/v1/collect); the shop relays the event to Trackdolphin. If the shop REST route is unavailable, browser events can fall back to your project collector directly.
• Reads the visitor’s consent decision from the WP Consent API, Google Consent Mode, Cookiebot, Usercentrics, IAB TCF and Trackdolphin’s own banner. Only an explicit analytics or marketing grant unlocks event delivery; identifiers and cookies additionally require their respective consent. A page-level default never grants permission.
• Delivers purchases in the background through the WooCommerce Action Scheduler, signed with an installation key, with retries for up to seven days. The thank-you page never waits for Trackdolphin.
• Optionally serves the Trackdolphin consent banner you design in the dashboard, using the readable GPL-licensed JavaScript bundled in the plugin.
• Shows a status line in WordPress: link state, last confirmed connection, consent management detected, purchases the server declined, and pending delivery jobs.

External services

This plugin is an interface to Trackdolphin, a server-side tracking service operated by Trackdolphin (Germany). The service processes events, stores consent records and forwards conversions to your connected advertising and analytics platforms. Using it requires a Trackdolphin account; you create the account and a project at app.trackdolphin.com and link the shop with a one-time activation code from the dashboard. The code carries the collector address, the project id and a one-time secret for signed communication; it does not unlock plugin features.

Until you paste that activation code, the plugin contacts no external server at all. No script is added to your pages, no cookie is set, no request leaves your shop — not on install, not on activation, not on a page view. Every connection described below starts only after you have linked the shop yourself.

The plugin communicates with your project collector and links to the dashboard. The consent banner JavaScript is bundled locally in assets/td-consent.js under GPL-2.0-or-later; no executable banner code is downloaded from Trackdolphin.

1. The Trackdolphin collector of your project — https://<project>.trdph.com

The plugin locally blocks browser events, paid orders and refunds until the visitor has explicitly granted analytics or marketing consent. It also blocks fully denied decisions. This applies even when the service returns “collect” (sammeln) or “always” (immer); the settings page explains the override. Queued purchases without an eligible checkout snapshot are discarded without transmission.

The exact address is contained in the activation code you paste. Your shop sends the following to it; browser events can also be sent directly by the visitor’s browser when the shop REST route is unavailable:

• Browser events, relayed only after the local consent check while a visitor is browsing (page view, product view, add to cart, checkout start, payment info): event type, page URL (query parameters and referrer only with marketing consent), currency, product ids, names, prices and quantities, the visitor’s consent state, a first-party visitor id and session id (only with consent), click ids from Google and Meta (only with consent), and the visitor’s IP address and user agent, so that the advertising platforms can attribute the event to the visitor instead of to your server.
• Paid orders and refunds, in the background only with an eligible consent snapshot recorded on the order: order id, value, tax, shipping, currency, coupon, payment method, line items, the buyer’s country, SHA-256 hashes of the buyer’s e-mail, phone, first and last name, city, state and postcode, a pseudonymous customer id, the identifiers captured at checkout, the buyer’s IP address and user agent, WooCommerce order attribution (UTM values, entry page) and the consent snapshot recorded at checkout.
• Banner configuration, fetched as JSON when a linked shop page needs it and cached for five minutes per visitor country: project id and, only after visitor consent and when locally available, the visitor’s country. The JavaScript that displays the banner is included in the plugin.
• Consent decisions made in the Trackdolphin banner, if you use it: the decision itself, language, page and visitor id (the collector stores only a hash of that id).
• A status report, once a day and on every click on “Verbindung prüfen” (check connection): plugin, PHP, WordPress and WooCommerce versions, whether HPOS is enabled, which consent management tool was detected, and the delivery counters, so that the dashboard can show the state of the installation. This report contains no visitor data.
• A revocation, once, when you uninstall the plugin: the installation key is invalidated.

Trackdolphin additionally applies the per-country project rule before forwarding events to an advertising platform. That rule cannot relax the plugin’s local consent check. Configuration requests and installation status reports use the shop server connection and do not forward visitor IP addresses or user agents; consent records are sent only after a banner decision.

2. https://app.trackdolphin.com — the dashboard

Linked from the plugin’s settings page for you to click. The plugin itself sends nothing there.

By linking your shop you agree to the Trackdolphin terms of service and acknowledge its privacy policy. Data sent to Trackdolphin is processed on your behalf under the data processing agreement.

• Terms of service: https://trackdolphin.com/en/docs/agb
• Privacy policy: https://trackdolphin.com/en/docs/datenschutzerklaerung
• Data processing agreement: https://trackdolphin.com/en/docs/avv
• Documentation: https://trackdolphin.com/en/docs

Technical details