Forum Display Enhancements - Country Display for Who's Online

*** Staff note: The author of this modification has passed away in a diving accident. We wish his family all strength in dealing with this traggic issue. ***

Country Display for Who's Online

What does this do?

It adds another column to your Who's Online display, with the country where the user is logging on from. You can choose either the name, the flag or both. You can also decide which users can see this information.

How about a quick summary of features?

Country display can be admin/moderator only, or available for everyone to see
You can display the country name, a flag, or both. You can use alternative flag sets if you want
Adds minimal overhead, no additional queries
Works on 3.6.6, 3.6.7 and should work for future versions as well. Will not work on versions prior to this. There is a manual file hack for previous versions here (unsupported).
Country information is provided by the GLA (Geographic Location Awareness) mod. Therefore updates to GLA will automatically provide improvements to any mod using GLA.

How do I install?

1. Install GLA first. You can find it here. It's easy and takes a minute.
2. Download and install the enclosed .xml file via adminCP -> Plugins & Products -> Manage Products -> Add/Import Product -> Import.

How do I configure it?

By default it will display only the country name to admin, super moderators and moderators. You can change this under vBulletin Options -> Who's Online Options. Be sure to check these options and click "save", even if you haven't changed anything. See attached screenshots.

Before posting on this thread:

If your issue concerns questions about country detection, the accuracy of the database, etc - please post your question on the GLA thread instead. Please only post issues here concerning the Who's Online display itself.

Please click install. Support requests from people who have not clicked install may not be answered.

Version history:
V1.0 - (07.07.07) Initial release

[mfyvie]

Originally Posted by mktrilogy

can this be integrated to postbit? that would be really cool

That's nothing to do with the Who's Online display, but you can read my answer to the same question on the GLA thread.

[tanyeri24]

Originally Posted by mfyvie

Disappointing. I offered to support you in your native language, but you never sent me a PM. Your loss.



As the saying goes my friend, those who can read have an advantage. You should try it.

I'm also from Switzerland. I had many plugins from here, but I followed your instructions.. And clicked then installed maybe a little late sorry for that.
Not all plugins working on all users, if there users they get it work maybe there is something wrong with my forum. It's possible, I'm not right a prof. Anyways thanks for your kind messaging and trying to help me.
Gute nacht.

[Hornstar]

Hey very nice stuff! this looks well done.

[JD45]

Originally Posted by mfyvie

Does your database have a table called ip2country, and is this table populated with data? (This means GLA is installed)
Look at your session table (in the database) - there should be three extra columns on it for country information. They should be populated, at least partially (unless you installed in only a few seconds before checking).

Manually hack in $session[country] somewhere into one of your templates. If GLA is running, this will show YOUR country when you load the page (then remove it again). Best way is to confirm via the session table. If the data is being written to the session table, then you should at least get it in $session[country]

Ok, I do have the table called ip2country and it is populated with data. There are the three extra columns in the session table and they do have data.

Now here's the odd part. I put in $session[country] in templates like the navbar, footer, forumhome etc and it never once showed up.

Any further ideas?

[SocialNetworkBuzz]

Would love to see this coded to show flags on the forum home, who's online box inside of whats going on.

[TomasDR]

Hopefully you can help with my issue though I have read your concerns of using 3.6.6 or higher.

GLA seems to be working but something is wrong with the display of Who's online.

My last full install was 3.6.4, I patched it when the exploit was found and 3.6.5 came out.
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=221905
Patch: A second option is to download the patch files discussed in this thread and upload them to your web server, overwriting the existing files. The patch is available from the Members' Area patch page or you can find it attached to this thread.

Then I was out of town in May and came back when 3.6.7 was released. I saw 3.6.6 was out but didn't upgrade. Instead I just used the plugin patch of 3.6.7.

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=229950
Plugin: The plugin system built into vBulletin 3.6 allows the problem to be fixed with a simple plugin. The install file for this plugin is also attached to this thread and is the easiest way to fix the problem, as it does not require you to upload any files via FTP. The plugin will be automatically removed when you perform your next full upgrade. You can install the plugin by following the instructions here.
Plugin File: vb_calendar366_xss_fix_plugin.xml

Now I know in the perfect world a full upgrade to 3.6.7 would be best but with the number of hacks I have that is a 5+ hour project! Either way I am protected from the exploits found by the vBulletin team.

Now on to my problem with this hack.

First I checked the session table and the three additional fields country_iso2/3 & country are being populated!

Secondly I added $session[country] to a template and it did return my country properly.

Clearly the GLA product is working with a patched 3.6.4 vBulletin.

My problem is the display of Who's Online as I mentioned above.

Please see the attached screenshot. The column is being added but there is no column title nor any country information. Also note if someone does have IM information it's being placed in the new title-less column, not the IM column.

I have only one hack that modifies the WHOSONLINE template and that is a spider hack which divides up guests & spiders.

Other plugins working with any other related online.php hooks are either online_location_process or ..._unknown only.

Thanks in advance.

[mfyvie]

Originally Posted by Stabatha

Would love to see this coded to show flags on the forum home, who's online box inside of whats going on.

That could create a huge amount of clutter. That area is designed to take text - imagine what it would look like with 300 flags in there?

Originally Posted by JD45

Ok, I do have the table called ip2country and it is populated with data. There are the three extra columns in the session table and they do have data.

Now here's the odd part. I put in $session[country] in templates like the navbar, footer, forumhome etc and it never once showed up.

Any further ideas?

Ok, that's odd. If you have the session columns and they are populated, then it's working. Once that table is extended, those values are loaded automatically by vb. You may be putting it in a part of the template that doesn't display?

I just went to footer, and inserted $session[host] as the very first line. This displays the IP address and should work for you - it worked for me and has nothing at all to do with this mod.

Of course there's a remote possibility that your own session has the country field blank if it couldn't look up your address. Maybe you should double check the session table to find your own entry and check.

[mfyvie]

@TomasDR - Just because you've installed some plugins which fix security issues, this is NOT the same as running 3.6.6 or higher. As I said in that information the problem is that you are missing a hook, and this won't be fixed by security patches!

I also said that GLA will work fine (which you've just confirmed), but that Who's online won't work properly.

Because the hook is missing, the mod then has no way to add those extra fields into the query which is pulling the info from the database.

I'm going to update the .xml file so that it will refuse to install on anything less than 3.6.6. I doubt that will eliminate people complaining though.

I'm afraid you'll have to bite the bullet and upgrade. 3.6.6 contains around 20 new hooks and is the only version that will support the new blog and project tools products.

[Playa82]

thanks , works fine

[Magnumutz]

Hey, very nice mod man... I love it... and will *Installed* it right now.