Extended timeout for whois online without changing cookie timeout

[Jakeman]

Extended timeout for whois online without changing cookie timeout - vBulletin 2.2.6 - Jake's second hack. wOOtie! :D

About: This hack will make your forumhome and whois online pages show all users from the last X amount of time without increasing the actual login time. By using this hack instead of simply changing your cookietimeout setting in your admin cp you can avoid the side effect of increasing the login time which jacks the unread post markers for your users.

Indications: forums needing the appearance of more traffic. :p

Directions: four small file mods. see attached file.

Demo: my site @ http://www.macsubculture.com/

[Neo]

Nice. I will install it later on. Great Hack :D

[lordofgun]

will this also reduce load on the server? we are having so many people on the boards that we have had some occasional blackouts.

[Jakeman]

this should have no effect on server load either way

[nafae]

Originally posted by Jakeman
By using this hack instead of simply changing your cookietimeout setting in your admin cp you can avoid the side effect of increasing the login time which jacks the unread post markers for your users.


Sounds like a great hack, but am curious what this means? I have noticed that the mark as read feature doesn't work particularly well on my board, could this be the culprit?

[lordofgun]

thanks

what i meant was this...

we have our timeout set at 1200. it doesn't show as many users online as i'd like at 1200. but if i raise it, there's too much load on the server. Would this be useful in showing more users online, without having to increase the server load by raising the timeout?

am i making sense? lol

[Jakeman]

Originally posted by lordofgun
thanks

what i meant was this...

we have our timeout set at 1200. it doesn't show as many users online as i'd like at 1200. but if i raise it, there's too much load on the server. Would this be useful in showing more users online, without having to increase the server load by raising the timeout?

am i making sense? lol

hmm, do you have persistant connections enabled? if so, turn them off. (it's a setting in your forum/admin/config.php)

nafae, i know exactly what you are talking about. that problem is caused by a limitation of browser cookies and there is nothing you can do about that under the current system. one way vB could fix that is to directly query the database for post markers instead of using cookies, but this increases the server load. maybe vB has something in the works for version 3.

anyways, this hack simply gives the appearance of more traffic by displaying users from the last hour (or whatever you choose). many people will set their cookie timeout really high to give the appearance of more users, but setting the cookie really high means you are also increasing the login time which jacks with unread post markers... example, a user logs into your forum and then is inactive for 2 hours. since your login cookie is set to 1 hour (for example) then any new posts made within the first hour of inactivity will *not* be marked as unread the next time they login. do you see what i'm saying? this hack allows you to increase the time for the whois online list without touching your login cookie time.

*head explodes* :p

[Admin]

I'm not too familiar with the session code and can't be bothered to look right now, but I think this *will* jack the markers for users that don't use cookies (thus using the sessions table, which is only emptied after one hour instead of 15 minutes).

Like I said I'm not sure, maybe a dev can confirm this. :)

[lordofgun]

thanks jakeman!

great hack, BTW!

[Jakeman]

Originally posted by FireFly
I'm not too familiar with the session code and can't be bothered to look right now, but I think this *will* jack the markers for users that don't use cookies (thus using the sessions table, which is only emptied after one hour instead of 15 minutes).

i will test this without cookies when i get home from work tonight... i never thought of that. i have had no complaints from my members so far, but they all might be using cookies (myself included). we will see.

[Admin]

Alright. I'll look at the code later today see if my assumption is right. :)

[Jakeman]

it turns out i wasn't using cookies all along... it's working fine with and without cookies.

firefly, what's the process for getting this hack out of the beta forum? do you move it and i edit the first post and attachment to remove the beta stuff, etc?

[Admin]

Moved it, you can edit your post now. :)

[Jakeman]

thx :)

[inetd]

Good Hack!
* inetd install hack later :) :D

[Jakeman]

Originally posted by inetd
Good Hack!
* inetd install hack later :) :D

glad you like! ;)

[KuraFire]

So, is there confirmation on this hack working for 2.2.5 / 2.2.6 yet? :)

[Jakeman]

Originally posted by KuraFire
So, is there confirmation on this hack working for 2.2.5 / 2.2.6 yet? :)

i'm using it on 2.2.5 , same instructions apply. i'll update this thread.

[rascal]

Do I need to change anything in the Admin CP?

[KuraFire]

Well, you have to edit 2 files in root/ and 2 files in admin/ :p

Thx Jake, I've installed it, we'll see how it goes! :D

[urafreak]

does this work for vb3?

[Rexster]

How to get something like this to work in vb3 ?