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.

[frostyIntrepid]

my column for guest tracking disappeared after I installed the new version. any idea why?

[kollam003]

Wow Works Like a Charm wonderful thanks for the update dude

[GateKeper]

Originally Posted by frostyIntrepid

my column for guest tracking disappeared after I installed the new version. any idea why?

Same here, its no longer showing ...

EDIT:

Got it working, missed a step

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.


Did not read well enough, once I saw that and did it, all was OK

[GateKeper]

all is now working....cool,,Thanks

[Viper007Bond]

Works like a charm! (Don't forget to set usergroup permissions, guys!)

However, I like to display the guest count for guests / normal users, but not the IPs and such. It'd be nice if the user couldn't view the list/IPs/etc. to not display the link to the page. It may confuse the users.

[jluerken]

Hi PaulM,

with version 1.19 I get a MySQL Error when clicking on a Spider link
(misc.php?do=guestlist&type=Visitors)

Database error in vBulletin 3.6.8:

PHP Code:

Invalid SQL:

        SELECT COUNT(dateline) AS count, guest.* 
        FROM vb3_guest AS guest
        LEFT JOIN vb3_guestviews as guestviews
        ON (guest.guestid = guestviews.guestid AND guestviews.dateline > 1190098883)
        WHERE lastactive > 1190098883 AND spider = ''
        GROUP BY guestid 
        ORDER BY lastactive DESC 
        LIMIT 1000;

MySQL Error  : Illegal mix of collations (latin1_swedish_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation '='
Error Number : 1267 


[djbaxter]

One tiny error. After installing version 1.19, the product is still showing 1.17 in the ACP.

To fix, find this line (line 6) in Track-guests.xml:

	<version>1.17</version>

Change to:

	<version>1.19</version>

and reinstall with the "overwrite" option.

[KURTZ]

i think is better if Paul call this version 1.20 ...

[GateKeper]

Not sure but we were getting a lot of these message's yesterday

Database error in vBulletin 3.6.5:

Invalid SQL:

INSERT INTO guestviews
(guestid, forumid, threadid, dateline, ipaddress)
VALUES
('c6f6d370d924653af28418674582e88d', 0, 0, 1190190071, 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx');

MySQL Error : Duplicate entry 'c6f6d370d924653af28418674582e88d-0-0' for key 1 Error Number : 1062
Date : Wednesday, September 19th 2007 @ 08:21:11 AM
Script : http://ftaview.com/
Referrer :
IP Address : xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Username : Unregistered
Classname : vb_database

I think it was because in those few moments I did not setup the permissions in the user group manager, but I cannot confirm this was the reason, as one of the other Admins, did a restore of a previous backup, and the messages went away, this did not affect the installation of this hack, as it's still on and running, however no one is reporting the above error messages anymore, current version of hack is running, user group permissions are all done....

so not sure still as to why...

any thoughts ?

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

One tiny error. After installing version 1.19, the product is still showing 1.17 in the ACP.

To fix, find this line (line 6) in Track-guests.xml:

	<version>1.17</version>

Change to:

	<version>1.19</version>

and reinstall with the "overwrite" option.

If your XML says 1.17 then you have the wrong version, the XML uploaded says 1.19.