Forum Home Enhancements - Track Guest Visits

As of 23 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.

This tracks 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.

This modification adds another section to the "What's Going On" area.
It also has seperate pages to display (1) the list of guests, and (2) the pages a particular guest has visited

Options / Features ;

* The ability to turn the whole modification on/off.
* The ability to turn just the forumhome display on/off.
* The ability to allow (or prevent) certain usergroups viewing the forumhome display.
* The ability to switch between 'Today' and Rolling 24 Hours display (default).
* 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.
* The datastore read (for spider detection) will read from the File/APC/Xcache datastore if used [note, not Memcache].
* 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.
* The option to keep a record of [and display] the most ever guests.
* Usergroup permissions are done with the standard vbulleten usergroup permissions system.
* Clicking on the main display icon will list the recent visits by all guests (if allowed).
* Clicking on a Guest type in the main display will list all recent visits by guests of that type (again, if allowed).
* Clicking on the option in the guest listing will show that guests viewing data (if enabled, and allowed).
* The main display can be set as always collapsed on initial page load (4.0.3 +)

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.

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

To install (or upgrade);

• Unzip the files.
• If upgrading from a previous version, delete any old trg bitfield xml files from your ../includes/xml/ folder.
• Upload the new bitfields file to your ../includes/xml/ folder.
• Import the product into vBulletin using the ACP Product Manager.
• Set your required permissions in the usergroup manager.

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


You can get an improved Spiders Definition file from this post.

Note: For Spider detection to work you must set Enable Spider Display to 'Yes' in vBulletin Options > Who's Online Options.
The installation code will turn this on for you.

It is recommended that you visit your Who's Online page after installing this mod (or after updating your spiders file) to make sure your spider definitions are built / rebuilt.


History:


Beta Releases

v4.0.0.2 : 04-Jan-2010 : Initial Beta release for vb 4.0.0 Gold.
v4.0.0.3 : 05-Jan-2010 : Fix scope error in global hook database write.
v4.0.0.5 : 06-Jan-2010 : Second stage Beta - Main Guest List Display added.
v4.0.0.6 : 06-Jan-2010 : Fix IP display error in Guest List Display.

v4.0.1 : 08-Jan-2010 : Initial release for vb 4.0.0 Gold.
v4.0.2 : 09-Jan-2010 : Minor code changes and fixes.
v4.0.3 : 16-Jan-2010 : Added always collapsed option.
v4.0.4 : 20-Feb-2010 : Internal update, not released.
v4.0.5 : 27-Feb-2010 : Style code updates for vB 4.0.2.
v4.0.6 : 19-Sep-2010 : Fix bug in attachment viewing links.
v4.0.7 : 23-Oct-2010 : Fixed for WGO style changes in vB 4.0.8.

v4.1.0 : 04-Dec-2010 : Updated for vBulletin 4.1.

v4.1.7.0 : 16-Oct-2011 : Updated for vBulletin 4.1.7.
v4.1.8.0 : 18-Nov-2011 : Updated for vBulletin 4.1.8 onwards (only).
v4.1.11.0 : 03-Mar-2012 : Updated for vBulletin 4.1.11 image changes.

v4.2.0.0 : 24-May-2012 : Updated for vBulletin 4.2.0.

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by CRDeveloper

Hey, I have two tables vbulletin_guestviews and vbulletin_guest that are getting overhead.

What do you mean "getting overhead" ?

Originally Posted by CRDeveloper

Im not able to repair or optimize those tables anymore.

Why not ?

Originally Posted by CRDeveloper

I red in other place that those are not vbulletin's defaults and may be added by this mod.

Thats correct, they are added by this mod.

Originally Posted by CRDeveloper

I was trying to uninstall but I can't...

Same question as above - why not ?

Originally Posted by CRDeveloper

Will be alright if i delete the tables and then reinstall again???

Yep, you could do that.


Sounds rather like you have a mysql issue. There is nothing special about those tables.

[Boofo]

I just optimized those tables fine without an issue.

[Maxi62]

Can you make this addon as widget?

[Paul M]

Probably not, or at least not the full version - might think about just the main (forumhome) display as a widget version at some point.

[Alfa1]

At what point would it make sense to prune the vb_guest table? I recently started using this addon and already have 100.000 records in that table. Does it matter / affect performance if this table will have millions of records?

[Paul M]

If your mysql is working well then it wont have much effect, its all indexed.

However, have you got the auto clean-up disabled ?

Unless you are using the data for something specific then you dont need to keep more than a couple of days worth.

[Alfa1]

Thanks. I see now. I have the auto-cleanup enabled and the table only has data of guests that just visited. So the table will not grow to millions, unless my site become extremely popular.

[mmacrypt]

Thank you Paul, as usual, another great mod.

[OldSchoolDSL]

Optimizing my community. This included turning off most of anything that shows or tracks who is online.

Un-installed

But for what is is worth, this was a cool mod and Paul M did a good job

[naturalparent]

ok. i give up. ive installed. im sure its great. i want to see the stats....

where are they though?

in admin? client side?