User Activity Logging
 

USER ACTIVITY LOGGING.

Description:
This Mod will (eventually) allow you to track a users activity from any script within vB or its addons ... well at least those that make use of the Hook features.

Background:
I have seen various requests around for some form of user logging but never been able to find an actual Mod. As we had a need for this on our site I decided to write my own.
I have been working with vB for a couple of years now (and a php coder for a lot more) and made use of a number of other coders Mods, both as they had been released or customized to suit our own purposes. Although not a very active poster here at vBorg, it is one of my regular visits.

Installation:
Standard Product Import using the AdminCP.
No template changes.
Optional (for AdminCP Log Viewer):
- Upload contents of zip file

Upgrade:
Will be as above, but select 'Overwrite' ;)

Features:
Database and/or Thread notification of activity
Selectable Forum for Thread notification
Selectable posting User for Thread notification
On/Off for each logging area
AdminCP Log Viewer/Pruner
Additional thread option for logging all Log-ins and outs

Current Logging Areas:
showthread - logs when a user views a thread (this is currently the only one I am using and I am actually happy with)
forumdisplay - logs when a user views the forumdisplay script
search - logs when a user makes a search
editpost - logs when a user edits a post
log-ins/log-outs - logs successful and unsuccessful log-ins and log-outs
profile views - logs when a user views the 'member profile' page

ChangeLog:
v1.0.6 (28 Nov,2007) - incorporated IPAddress tracking as provided by dartho (thanks :) )
v1.0.5 (16 May,2007) - added profile viewing both for 'logged users' and 'all user to a separate thread'. No admincp file update required. NB: Check options after upgrading.
v1.0.4 (07 May,2007) - added log-in/out logging both for 'logged users' and 'all user to a separate thread'. No admincp file update required.
v1.0.3 (27 April, 2007) - Corrected 1 thread per logged user issue, added 'editpost' logging area
v1.0.2 (25 April, 2007) - Check for deleted thread & added AdminCP Log Viewer
v1.0.1 (24 April, 2007) - Error in XML
v1.0.0 (24 April, 2007) - Initial release

Future Enhancements?:
Additional logging areas (just ask and I'll look in to it)
[S]Viewable log transcripts taken from database entries[/S] - completed
Usergroup logging

Thanks To:
All those other coders whose Mods I have installed and learned from :)

Note: This is the first Mod I have actually released here (or anywhere), so please go easy on me ;)
Hopefully I have the Product URL and Version Checking URL links right.

Reserved ... don't know why, but everybody else does :P

Looks good man. I'll install it for those troublesome members.

Thanks glorify. Don't forget to click the 'Installed' link ;)

Nice mod but sorry I get this

Sorry. My mistake when adding the URLs to the XML instead of in the ACP itself.
Fixed and re-uploaded.

This looks quite nice! Is there any way to log in attempts or url access as well? In other words, if a guest is attempting to log in as an existing user (say admin) then this is logged along with IP address, user name, and password attempt...
This is also good for those users who try to access staff areas or areas restricted from them.
This would be FANTASTIC if this could be added as I know SMF boards already have this in place and can be viewed, and deleted from adminCP area.
Sorry but this mod looks close to what I have been hoping for.

So in essence you would like to log error messages not specific to a particular user?

Yes, that would be nice to also log guest attempts as well as user attempts. Maybe by user group?

Great potential this mod is I'll wait till it's out of beta stage and tweaked as mentioned above. Yes logging in the users trying to log into another member is a nice feature to have. I assume there is a way to clear this log as well?

Short answer is yes, but you would need to modify the core vB code to add some extra Hook locations.

Basically with this hack you can log any script at any point where there exists a Hook. No hook - no log. But there is nothing preventing us adding our own Hook locations (except ease of upgrades :) )

PM me if you would be interested in discussing having me do this for you.

:( it killed my forum... i kept getting fatal errors as soon as it was installed, when i removed it everything went back to normal... anyone else had anything similar happen? and or know how to fix it

Currently the database side is simply to start logging entires. Nothing so far is done with the data and you can turn off database logging if you wish.

My plan is to provide an ACP interface similar to the Moderator Logging already included (which is where I got the basic code idea from)

What kind of fatal errors? Could you send me a screen shot please.

PM sent and no bell19189 I have not installed yet. Asking for enhancement to this before I review.

Just had a thought regarding the fatal errors. Originally I had set the XML to install Inactive because you need to set up the options before turning it on. This is possibly what caused the errors.

I will put some option-error-checking in it for the next update.

OK, I've done some additional testing with a variety of incorrect option settings ... cannot get it to cause fatal errors.

No User ID's ... nothing gets logged
No Forum Selected ... nothing gets posted
No Posting User ... nothing gets posted
User ID but nothing else ... no postings
etc

I will be really interested to discover what caused the fatal error.

I will test - but the concept is very interesting!
Thanks for share.
All the best
joao barroca
aka beduino
ps. your site it's very useful too :)

Here is my error:

Thanks Mastar. I didn't think about what would happen if the logging thread was deleted :(

I have corrected this problem and also added an optional AdminCP Log Viewer/Pruner.

How about a Screenshot of the Page showing the Statistics

Usergroup logging will be great. Installed.

It seems that the activities of guests will also be logged?
I checked the log just moment ago, there are 5 entries from guests and 1 entry from myself.

Edit: OK, I figured it out, when there's no user id entered, then it will log all of the activities. But once a userid is entered, then only the entered userid's activity will be logged. Am I right?

Thanks for this.... Very Nice.... I do have 1 question. When it creates the thread, it is making posts for all the users in the same thread... I thought it would create a thread for each user. Am I wrong in my thoughts??

Thank You for this script

I was wondering that too!

This hack has fantastic potential, and if it could either update one log thread per member OR include their username in the post, it would be close to perfect! :)

agree, great potential for this hack, just installed on my board ... and waiting for new devs ... ;)

It should be creating 1 thread per user being logged.

A question about usergroup logging ... should it still be 1 thread per user or 1 thread per usergroup? I could possibly even add that as an option.

What it is doing, I have 3 userid's that I am watching... It creates a thread for the first user, then is puts all the activity for that user in the thread, now if a second user connects, it is putting this users activity in the same thread as the first user.... Does that make since...

Nope, doesn't make sense. I'll investigate it further.

Stay tuned.

I've corrected the thread problem and it now creates a new thread for each user being logged.

Thank you for update.

Advice: can you please release the script and product file in one package? or better write the version number in the zip name.

No probs. I've kept the zip file separate as it's optional and only required if you activate database logging and want to access the logs from the ACP.

updated!

Updated... WOW thank You

That upgrade seems to fix the errors, thanks! Good work!

updated!

Is there a way to log member profile views with this?

There is now :D

haha just last night I was messing around with plugin code and I don't know how I did it but I managed to get it to log profile views although it is dependent on whether the "log thread views" option is enabled.

Next step is Private Messaging. Logging whether someone is viewing/sending a private message etc.

One question I do have. It doesn't parse BB code for me. Any idea why? Incidentally I just removed the url outputs from the plugins but will change it back if there's a way the log can parse that. These are specifically the [ URL ] bbcodes that show up in logs.

Also is it supposed to log that someone is "editing" a post or "replying" to a thread? Mine doesn't. It just saying "viewing" a thread so I'm guessing that's by design and not an error.

That's odd about the BB code not parsing for you. It's supposed to and does in my test environment :(

Thread editing, replying and private messaging are not yet included but I will add these in next chance I get ... might even be later tonight if other things I am working on don't go well ;)