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.

[Paul M]

I don't understand your question.

[meissenation]

Paul, is there any way possible to use https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=151601 GLA - Geographic Location Awareness with this? That would make this mod UBER sweet if we could see the Guest tracking and it showed the country where the guest's IP resolves to.

[john2k]

Paul, excellent work. Thanks a lot for making this mod. I just have a few questions for you.

Question 1:
Is there any setting that will remove the hyperlinks from what is displayed on the forumhome? If a usergroup is not permitted to view the Guest Visits List or the Guest Tracking data, maybe the links should not even be visible. I'm not sure, but it looks as though they will display but return the not logged in message for anyone who cannot view.

Question 2:
Is there a setting that will entirely turn off all tracking details other than the totals that are displayed on forumhome? Basically so that no data is collected for the guest visits list or the individual guest tracking pages.

Question 3:
What exactly does the Code Option do? Guest tracking for the homepage, forums and threads seems to work properly with "Run Code on the Forum Homepage Only" selected. I didn't notice anything different when I switched it to "Run Code on all pages." I'm not clear on what this option is for.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Paul M]

1. No, not at the moment, I may change it in the future.

2. You can turn off the extra guest tracking in the modifications options.

3. It's for people who want to display the guest counts on pages other than the index page - some people like to do this, so the option is standard in all my homepage display mods. If you don't need it then just leave it as is.

[john2k]

Originally Posted by Paul M

2. You can turn off the extra guest tracking in the modifications options.

Does doing that only turn off the display of guest tracking data or does it completely stop the data from being tracked and saved in the database?

The option to turn off the extra guest tracking would be the "Enable Views Tracking" option, correct?

Originally Posted by Paul M

3. It's for people who want to display the guest counts on pages other than the index page - some people like to do this, so the option is standard in all my homepage display mods. If you don't need it then just leave it as is.

The Code Option seems like it may be quite useful. If it is set to run on all pages, can the data be used individually or only as a whole? For example, are there variables that I could use to display only the total number of guests or visitors in the past 24 hours? So in effect, the only thing I would get from the variable is the number and I could take care of integrating that number into the site myself.

[Paul M]

It turns it off completely, no data is collected.

The total number of guests is $gueststoday (or $fgueststoday for the formatted version).

[ericho]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Without some clue as to what they were there is nothing i can tell you, but it sounds like it failed to install properly.

Thanks Paul - I have just done another install and will see how that goes.
Elizabeth

[mystic10]

when i upload the bitfields file to my ../includes/xml folder..it says Invalid File Specified..what should i do

[Paul M]

What exactly says that ?

[mystic10]

when i try to upload the bitfields file it says invalid file specified...