Can we fix the who's online section? It pretty much says everyone is online.

vkimo wrote :

Can we fix the who's online section? It pretty much says everyone is online.
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I've thought about that for quite some time. Two things about that:

1 - In order to make it so that a user is only listed according to activity would require some way of tracking them on site by IP address I'm guessing. I have a feeling that could get expensive, and figured it would be money better spent on other things.

2 - Having the appearance of more activity than what is really happening, might actually benefit us by convincing others they need to get in on what's happening.

The system tracks when a user has logged in or logged out. If you don't log out on the computer you are using on then you remain "logged in" according to the site.

P.S. - Oh, and there are still another 54 people NOT logged in. So not EVERYBODY is logged in.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The users who remain logged in throw off the system. RJ had a users online option and it was pretty accurate. There was an IP tracker or something because as a mod you could see their login and IP history.

Most people who implement these sort of things track all active sessions within the database. They would either source it from the $_SESSIONS array every time a user logs in and remove each entry as they expire or you could go all out and create an entire session interface class and handle everything within the DB itself.

Once it's all in the DB querying who's online would be trivial.

Vaporman87 wrote :
The system tracks when a user has logged in or logged out. If you don't log out on the computer you are using on then you remain "logged in" according to the site.

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Forever?

Linux_Sage wrote :

Most people who implement these sort of things track all active sessions within the database. They would either source it from the $_SESSIONS array every time a user logs in and remove each entry as they expire or you could go all out and create an entire session interface class and handle everything within the DB itself.

Once it's all in the DB querying who's online would be trivial.
-end quote

I forgot we had a developer in our midst. Well, another one that is.

That would be essentially the same as what it is now, right? Except that as it is now, there is no expiration. The status is only changed when the user manually logs off. I've gone into the DB and manually logged everyone off before. Just to see who would eventually log in again (some have not even done so since I last did that).

What would be involved in tracking the activity of a logged in user in order to tag them as "online"? On RJ, it even shows which thread the user is looking at. How would that work?

Vaporman87 wrote :

Linux_Sage wrote :


Most people who implement these sort of things track all active sessions within the database. They would either source it from the $_SESSIONS array every time a user logs in and remove each entry as they expire or you could go all out and create an entire session interface class and handle everything within the DB itself.

Once it's all in the DB querying who's online would be trivial.
-end quote

I forgot we had a developer in our midst. Well, another one that is.

That would be essentially the same as what it is now, right? Except that as it is now, there is no expiration. The status is only changed when the user manually logs off. I've gone into the DB and manually logged everyone off before. Just to see who would eventually log in again (some have not even done so since I last did that).

Well that could explain why everyone shows up. If the Login action and
the LogOut action are the only two things which make changes to that
table and there there are people who rarely ever explicitly Logout and
instead close their tab or something then there's no way of truly
knowing who's online.  It may be best to do this at the session level.

What would be involved in tracking the activity of a logged in user
in order to tag them as "online"? On RJ, it even shows which thread the
user is looking at. How would that work?
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Most likely they implement a custom session handler and store all session data within the database rather than the filesystem of the server. Then they could easily add custom things like what they're browsing, what their IP is, etc. and all this stuff will get updated as their activity changes.

I see the Users Online section is completed. By that, I mean updated.

Not yet. It's still being fine tuned, and likely will be for a few days.

It's a start at least. It's progress.