whos online.

jarred

forgive me if this is a repeat and is being addressed, but is there a 'whos online' component to the forum? everything else is swell..

lech

I think from here on out, any "extras" you would want or need, should be treated as an extension. I'm willing to bet mark will tell you the same thing.

jarred

ok thanks.. does anybody think it is a worthwhile extension?

lech

Well, if it's useful to you, it's probably a worthwhile extension if you need to know who's online vs how many users you might have. The only thing is, is that as you add more extensions that aggresivly poll the server and db, the slower loading times you'll get overall. So more extensions won't necessarily mean better performance.

Mark

Right now I have made a saved search that I call "Recent Visitors" that is just a search for users ordered by the most recently active. It's a nice way for me to see who's on here. Of course I could make an extension and add it anywhere on the page. But I'm hoping that once I finish the documentation, some people *other* than me start making extensions like this :)

lech

/me waits eagerly for a full blown function list document with details :) Yeah, I don't think this one is necessary as a core feature, more likely an extension. I think what jarred was asking for is on how most phpBB's if you enter a forum section, it will say at the top who else is reading what thread and so on.

Minisweeper

i'll point out at this point that due to the way vanilla works i dont think its possible to tell who's *actually* on is it? Ofcourse you can check who's been on in the last X minutes, which is probably perfectly adequate, but it wont be 100% true.

dom

That is what most other forums do as well, as far as I am aware. Doing anything more would require a java application to be running, or some other similar solution. It may, however, be better to describe the feature/extension as "Users active in the last 15 minutes", rather than "Who's online"

Mark

Yeah - I figure the two are one in the same. If they're active, then they're on the forum. If they're inactive, then they're not. I feel silly even writing that.

lech

It wouldn't really require java or javascript really. It might really only be useful to constantly update the DB with a timestamp as the user remains active. Seeing as how it's already extending the session each time you click through, you can gague it based on that alone. While it won't be super-accurate down to the second, it should be accurate to within say the 3 minute window you give it until the session times out.

dom

Getting live, up-to-the-second data on who's online probably would require some sort of applet. Anything based upon the last time the user clicked is flawed because users aren't constantly clicking. Not to say that using that method would be insufficient, because who needs it accurate to the second?

lech

exactly, plus having to monitor it via an applet would be flawed for those users like me who loath and refuse to install java :) just a simple query to show who's still clicking through to within x ammount of minutes or seconds works well for me. Anything short of stalking the person.

Minisweeper

Hmmm.. i like your last idea lech. I recon if we take X users each, us here at community can monitor every vanilla user in the world and report back for each forum.

lech

haha wtf?!

Minisweeper

Oh.. You said anything short of stalking the person...i thought you were suggesting it.

Maybe i'll have to do it all myself though.

lech

haha, yes.

Keith

Does anyone know how to switch on Who's online so that guests can see it?

Minisweeper

If you open up the default.php of the extension, you'll probably find an if statement containing $Context->Session->UserID > 0, try changing that to >= 0.

Keith

That didn't work. It just gave out a warning message of an error on line 143. I tried > =0 and > = 0

Minisweeper

What about if you just change it to if (true) ?

Keith

Are we guessing here? How would the code read please?