GTM4WP – A Google Tag Manager (GTM) plugin for WordPress vs GTM Kit – Google Tag Manager & GA4 integration

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is Google’s free tool for everyone to manage and deploy analytics and marketing tags as well as other code snippets using an intuitive web UI. To learn more about this tool, visit the official website. This plugin places the GTM container code snippets onto your WordPress website so that you do not need to add them manually. Multiple containers are also supported, and each container can have its own environment parameters, custom domain and custom path. The plugin complements your GTM setup by pushing page meta data and user information into the so-called data layer. Google’s official help pages include more details about the data layer. PHP 8.0 and WordPress 6.3 are required to use this plugin. GTM container code placement The original GTM container code is divided into two parts: The first part is a javascript code snippet that is added to the section of every page of the website. This part is critical to enable all features of GTM, and this plugin helps to place this part correctly on your site. The second part is an iframe snippet that acts as a failsafe/fallback should users’ JavaScript be disabled. Google recommends – for best performance – to place this code snippet directly after the opening tag on each page. Albeit not ideal, it will work when placed lower in the code. This plugin provides a code placement option for the second code snippet. If your WordPress theme is compatible with the additions of WordPress 5.2, then this plugin will place this second snippet in the right place. Users of the Genesis theme, GeneratePress theme, Elementor, Oxygen Builder and Beaver Builder Theme will also have it placed correctly. To utilize this, set the compatibility mode in the plugin options to off. All other users can place this second code snippet using custom PHP code (the “Manually coded” option), or select the so-called “Footer” option to add the code lower on the page (this is not the recommended way, but it will work). Basic data included post/page titles post/page dates post/page category slugs post/page tag slugs post/page author ID and name post/page ID post types post format post count on the current page + in the current category/tag/taxonomy custom terms associated with any post type logged in status logged in user role logged in user ID (to track cross device behavior in Google Analytics) logged in user email address (both unhashed and SHA256 hashed values to be used with tracking) logged in user creation date site search data site name and id (for WordPress multisite instances) IP address of the visitor (please obtain the visitor’s explicit consent before using this) post author data from PublishPress Authors, including co-authors and guest authors Content & engagement data Optional page variables that help with behavior tracking and Google Analytics 4 content grouping: content word count and estimated reading time last modified date and content age in days comment count and comment status page template, featured image presence, page hierarchy and sticky flag primary category, detected from Yoast SEO or Rank Math page language, detected from WPML or Polylang Browser / OS / Device data browser data (name, version, engine) OS data (name, version) device data (type, manufacturer, model) Data is collected in the browser using User-Agent Client Hints and pushed as a gtm4wp.deviceData event. Note that Safari and Firefox expose less detail than Chromium based browsers. Media player events Track users’ interactions with any embedded media: YouTube Vimeo Soundcloud HTML5 audio and video Dailymotion Mixcloud Cloudflare Stream Wistia JW Player VideoPress Spotify Twitch You can choose to fire data layer events when the media player loads, when the media is played, when it is paused or stopped, and optionally when the user reaches 10, 20, 30, …, 90, 100% of the media duration. Each event also populates Google Tag Manager’s built-in Video variables (Video Status, Video URL, Video Title, Video Provider, Video Duration, Video Current Time, Video Percent, Video Visible). Tracking is supported for embedded media using the built-in oEmbed feature of WordPress, as well as most other media plugins and copy/pasted embed codes. Players inserted into the page after it has loaded (for example in a popup, a lightbox or via AJAX) can also be tracked by turning on the optional “Track dynamically inserted players” setting. Tag restrictions: allowlist & blocklist Tag Manager tags, triggers and variables To increase website security, you have the option to allowlist or blocklist tags, triggers and variables. You can prevent specific tags from firing, or prevent the use of certain variable types, regardless of your GTM setup. If the Google account associated with your GTM account is compromised, an attacker could easily execute malware on your website without accessing its code on your hosting server. By blocklisting custom HTML tags, custom JavaScript variables and sandboxed scripts (custom tag and variable templates), you can secure the Tag Manager container. Integration Google Tag Manager for WordPress integrates with several popular plugins. More integrations to come! Contact Form 7: fire an event when a form is submitted with any result (mail sent, mail failed, spam detected, invalid input, submission aborted or terms not accepted). Optionally push the Google Analytics 4 recommended form events (form_start, form_submit, generate_lead) as well WooCommerce: Implementation of GA4 E-commerce Support for the Cart, Checkout, Mini-Cart, Product Collection and cross-sell blocks, not only the classic shortcode based pages Enhanced Conversions user data on the purchase event for Google Ads Compatibility with High Performance Order Storage (HPOS) Does not support promotions, since WooCommerce does not have such a feature (yet) Does not support refunds CheckoutWC: optional support for its multi step checkout template PublishPress Authors: co-author and guest author data in the page variables AMP: load your AMP container on the AMP version of your pages Google Consent Mode v2: fire the “default” command with specific consent flags to integrate with non-certified Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) and plugins Cookiebot: use automatic cookie blocking mode if needed Axeptio: load the Axeptio SDK and push every consent change into the data layer CookieYes: push a data layer event whenever the visitor’s consent changes Server side containers If you are using a server side container, you can enter your custom domain name and custom path to load gtm.js from there. Both can be set per container, so you can mix server side and standard containers on the same site. Cache-safe data layer (experimental, off by default) On sites using a full page cache (LiteSpeed, WP Rocket, Varnish, Cloudflare APO), the HTML generated for one visitor is served to everyone else as well. Any visitor specific value written into the data layer would therefore leak to other visitors – the classic example being a page cached while an editor was logged in, then served to anonymous visitors with that editor’s email address and role still in the data layer. When this option is enabled, no visitor or session data is written into cacheable HTML at all. Those values are delivered in the browser instead, under the same data layer variable names, so your existing Google Tag Manager setup keeps working. Export & import your settings You can export all plugin settings into a JSON file and import them on another site, which makes it easy to roll out the same configuration across several websites. Imported files are treated as untrusted and every value is validated before it is stored. Exclude specific user roles from being tracked You can set which user roles need to be excluded from tracking when a user with that role visits the frontend. This will completely disable the container code for that user. Staging and development sites The container can be limited to production environments only, so a cloned or staging copy of your site does not send data into your production Google Tag Manager container. This relies on the WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE setting of WordPress. For developers Version 2.0 is a complete object oriented rewrite. Every feature is a module, and third party plugins can register their own modules through the gtm4wp_register_modules action. All public template functions, filter and action names, wp-config constants and the option storage key of the 1.x versions are unchanged, so existing integrations keep working.

GTM Kit puts the Google Tag Manager container code on your website so that you don’t need to touch any code. It also pushes data from WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) and Contact Form 7 to the data layer for use with for Google Analytics 4, Facebook and other GTM tags. The goal of GTM Kit is to provide a flexible tool for generating the data layer for Google Tag Manager. It is easy to use and doesn’t require any coding, but it allows developers to customize the plugin as needed. The settings are organised around what you are trying to do (Setup, Events & data layer, Commerce, Consent & privacy, and Tools), so related options live together and the setting you need is quick to find. Know when your tracking breaks Tracking fails quietly. A caching plugin strips the container out of the page, a second plugin loads it a second time, a staging copy reports into your live property, and nothing on the settings screen says so. GTM Kit checks one of your own pages once a day, the way a visitor receives it, and tells you when nothing on your site is loading your container, or when your pages load tracking twice. Where it recognises the plugin or tool adding the second copy, it names it. Two checks in WordPress’s own Site Health screen report whether your container is set up and reaching your pages, and whether consent is configured. A GTM Kit section on the Info tab lists your whole configuration on one screen and copies it into a support request with one click. On sites WordPress reports as staging, development or local, GTM Kit leaves the container out, so test traffic never reaches your live analytics. The data layer is still built there, and a setting loads the container anyway when you are measuring a test site on purpose. eCommerce events tracked with Google Analytics 4 The following GA4 events are automatically included in the dataLayer: WooCommerce view_item_list select_item view_item add_to_wishlist [Premium] add_to_cart view_cart remove_from_cart begin_checkout add_shipping_info add_payment_info purchase refund [Premium] order_paid [Premium] order_processing [Premium] order_completed [Premium] order_refunded [Premium] subscription_started [Premium] Unlock all features with GTM Kit Premium. Easy Digital Downloads view_item add_to_cart begin_checkout purchase Flexible container implementation Depending on how you use Google Tag Manager you can delay the loading of the container script until the browser is idle. This may be relevant to you be if are focusing on pagespeed. You may enter a custom domain name if you are using a custom server side GTM (sGTM) container for tracking. It’s also possible to specify a custom loader. GTM Kit has full support for Stape server GTM hosting. You can also exclude specific pages from GTM entirely. Add URL patterns on the Container settings page and GTM Kit holds back the container, the noscript fallback, and its data layer scripts on matching pages. Useful for third-party checkout iframes, partner-hosted subpages, and in-app webview routes that run their own tracking. Glob patterns are supported by default, with optional regex for advanced matching. Moving from another Google Tag Manager plugin GTM Kit imports settings from Google Tag Manager for WordPress, Google Tag Manager for WooCommerce, Metronet Tag Manager and other GTM plugins, at any time, from the Tools page. Your container ID, data layer variables, Consent Mode defaults, excluded user roles and container environment come across in one step. Before anything is written you see exactly which of your settings will be replaced, and only settings the other plugin actually configured are touched. Post data You may specify which post data elements you wish to include in the dataLayer for use in Google Tag Manager. – Post type: include the type of the current post or archive page. – Page type: include a defined page type. I.e. post, page, product, category, cart, checkout etc. – Categories: include the categories of the current post or archive page. – Tags: include the tags of the current post or archive page. – Post title: include the post title of the current post. – Post ID: include the Post ID of the current post. – Post date: include the post date. – Post author name: include the post author name. – Post author ID: include the post author ID.