Forum Home Enhancements - Track Guest Visits

This modification is no longer available or supported.

Something that has been repeatedly asked in the "Members who visited today" modifications (all versions) is a similar way to track the number of guests that have visited a forum each day. This isn't possible in stock vbulletin as no record is kept of guest visits, they are a 'realtime' display only. I've therefore finally got round to looking at the issue and produced this modification.

This will add (another) section to the "What's Going On" area. The data is kept in a new table so it should be possible for other uses to be made of it (or display it in other ways). A screenshot of the current display is attached.

Options / Features ;

* The ability to turn it on/off.
* The ability to turn just the display on/off.
* The ability to allow (or prevent) certain usergroups viewing the display.
* The ability to run the display code on all pages (not just forumhome).
* The ability to switch between 'Today' and Rolling 24 Hours display (default).
* The list of guests can be set to be always collapsed on initial view.

* The script that the Guest is running is logged (e.g. showthread, usercp etc).
* The request variables in use are logged (e.g. threadid, userid etc).
* The guest table can be cleaned of old records to help control it's size.
* Controls for the displays automatic template update.
* The datastore read (for spider detection) will read from the File/APC/Memcache/Xcache datastore [if used].

Version 1.19+

* Guest Views data collection - tracking each guests viewing of the forum index page, forums and threads.
* Guest Views data collection can be separately disabled.
* Multiple guest visits to the same page are logged separately.
* Clicking on a Guest type in the main display will list all recent visits by guests of that type.
* Clicking on the option in the guest listing will show that guests viewing data (if enabled).
* Usergroup permissions are now done with the standard vbulleten usergroup permissions system.

Four new usergroup permissions are provided in the usergroup manager.

* Can View the Guests Visited Display - Members can view the guests visited display on Forumhome.
* Can View Guest IP Addresses - Members can see the ip addresses of visiting guests.
* Can View Guest Visits List - Members can view the list of guest visits page.
* Can View Guest Tracking Data - Members can view the individual guest visit tracking page.


Version 1.22+

The option to keep a record of [and display] the most ever guests has been added - this used to be provided by a seperate add-on product.


* All (non usergroup) modification settings are in vBulletin Options > Guest Tracking.

To install ;

• Unzip the XML files.
• Upload the bitfields file to your ../includes/xml folder.
• Import the product into vB using the ACP Product Manager.
• Set your required permissions in the usergroup manager.

Note that by default no permissions are given, you must set them.

You can get an improved Spiders Definition file, that recognises many more spiders, from this post.

Note: For Spider detection to work you must set Enable Spider Display to 'Yes' in vBulletin Options > Who's Online Options.

A German translation has been provided by hurik in post #769 - (for Version 1.22).


History:

v1.00 : Internal dev version.
v1.01 : Initial vb 3.6 beta release.
v1.02 : Phrasing added, final beta version.
v1.03 : Initial full version, some new options added.
v1.04 : Fix potential variable name clash with WVT Mod.
v1.05 : More options added, script and request variable logging added.
v1.06 : Minor internal code changes, phrasing altered slightly.
v1.07 : Datastore call changed to standard fetch function.
v1.08 : Moved Datastore call due to oddities, and fixed small bug.
v1.09 : Simplified always collapsed code.
v1.10 : Datastore call moved and reverted back to db_fetch.
v1.11 : Added Spider Cache Refresh on install (limited release).
v1.12 : Unique Guest id changed from standard vb id to internally created id.
v1.13 : Changed the SQL to force MySQL to use the index on forumhome.
v1.14 : Changed install code to delete old spider cache before rebuilding it.
v1.15 : Added check to try and detect a broken spider cache and fix it.
v1.16 : Number formatting added to individual totals in display list.
v1.17 : New usergroup display options added, datastore read updated.
v1.18 : Beta for new display options - listing guests and tracking guest views.
v1.19 : First release with the new permissions and display options.
v1.20 : Minor changes to install code only.
v1.21 : Internal development version, not released.
v1.22 : Added the "Most ever guests" option.

[firstrebel]

Yes, how observant. It is because I am getting a series of problems and as soon as I think it is fixed, it's not. It's called going round in circles. If you read them in sequence, and note the time stamps you may understand.

Bob

[jw00dy]

I had some trouble as well, and mine had to do with the spider watchers hack. I removed it, re-added, and now all is happy now.

[Smoothie]

So..... maybe I should wait to upgrade until this gets sorted out.

[funkmeister]

Works fine for me

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by firstrebel

I have just tried to uninstall this again, guess what, again -
And the forum was not accessible again, until I disabled the product. The table had been removed from the database but because I could not totally remove the product it generated lots of db errors.


..to quote just a few.

I had to reimport the table from an earlier backup and then I could uninstall the product cleanly. I am not reinstalling this again as something is just not right.

Bob

Whatever you uninstall problem is/was, it's related to your forum setup, I can happily uninstall/install this on my forum.

I can't even imagine what's calling the db alter class.

I'm still puzzled why you thought this was odd ;

Visitors (158), Yahoo! Slurp Spiders (507), MSNBot Spiders (4), Google Spiders (1)

I can't see anything wrong with them

[Shazz]

I can't get it to display the yahoo bots etc.

It only says
Visitors (457)

I have all the the options checked to "yes" in the vBoptions

Help would be appreciated

[Viper007Bond]

Originally Posted by firstrebel

Something is not right here, after just over an hour after removing and reinstalling I have this:

Bob

Nothing unusual about that. Yahoo enjoys sending a TON of bots at sites. When I changed subdomains after first installing vB, I literally had around 200 bots at once crawling the site.

[funkmeister]

See below for my current visitor list, what you see is not unusual, as has been stated earlier.

I do have one question - is a Visitor (or "Lurker" in my setup) - simply a non-member who's hit the forum or can it also include an undefined spider? If so - it could only be those 2 types of visitors that make up the total visitor number, right?

Thanks and keep up the good work.

[Nathan2006]

Thanks Paul

Updated

[Paul M]

@funkmeister - "Visitor" is any guest not specifically listed (detected) as a spider.