Show Thread Enhancements - Who has read a Thread

This modification is no longer available or supported.

This displays who has read a thread, and the time they last looked at it.

Hovering over a name will show when the member last viewed the thread, and (optionally) what IP address they viewed it from. Note that you can only view the ip addresses in the 'View-All' display.

There is also an option to allow a thread author to view who has read their thread when they are not in one of the allowed usergroups. The IP and number of days restrictions still apply.

The set/reset facility allows members to click on the 'set' link which then sets a personal 'cutoff' time - only showing who has read the thread after that time. The time can be reset as many times wanted, and also completely cleared again. When using this facility there is also a link to allow you to view a seperate list of all readers of the thread.

Warning: When using the set/reset option - there is only a limited capacity of entries per thread (several thousand) - therefore you should only allow this feature to be used by a limited number of people - typically Staff usergroups. Allowing all members to use it will probably slow down your forum and cause errors if more than about 3000 members set a date on one thread.

Note: You must have the "Show Users Browsing Threads" option set in your vbulletin options for this to display.

A cron job (optionally) allows the deletion of records from the whoread table that are over a certain age - this is provided for large forums where the number of table entries can start to reach a million or more after 12 months. The delete age is a setting in the ACP.

There are also settings for the following (in vBulletin Options > Who Has Read a Thread) ;

1. Turn the system on/off.
2. Restrict the display to certain usergroups
3. Restrict the IP display to certain usergroups.
4. Restrict the display to a set number of days.
5. Option to allow thread author to view who read information.
6. Option to turn on the who read cutoff date (reset) function
7. Restrict use of reset function to certain usergroups.
8. Option to set whoread data records to be cleaned out after xxx days.
9. Clicking on a user will display a page of their thread viewing history, most recent first.

Note: When using option 4 or the set/reset facility, the data is still kept beyond this limit, so they can be changed at any time.

Download the zip, extract the XML file and import using the vb Product Manager.

Version 3.7.006 has experimental support for TMS. If you have TMS installed then the existing automatic template update system will be disabled in favour of TMS. One effect of this is that when using TMS the requirement for "Show Users Browsing Threads" to be enabled is bypassed . This version will continue to work as before for those who do not use TMS.


History:

v3.7.001 : First Release for vb 3.7.
v3.7.002 : Added check for 'view others threads' permission.
v3.7.003 : Fix for cron_script hook changed in 3.7 Beta 4.
v3.7.004 : Bug fix for days limit when reset option is enabled.
v3.7.005 : Updated to remove potential $group variable name clash.
v3.7.006 : TMS Support added, this is currently experimental.
v3.7.007 : Threads read via the archive are now recorded. Minor permissions update as well.

[drsli]

Thank you very much for this enhancement!

[mikes04537]

installed! Thanks

[PGAmerica]

Where does this information show up in my thread? I have it active and have given the proper permissions, etc. The "Show Users Browsing Threads" is active.I don't see it. Help!!

[PGAmerica]

Is there ANY support for this hack at all?

[TrIn@dOr]

Spanish (Argentina - AR) without "vBulletin Settings" section.

[aciurczak]

I'm seeing some inconsistent behavior with this mod. I'm at the latest vB version (3.7.1 PL2). Several times yesterday, I was watching a particular thread on my site. There were users who were shown in the "Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread" section, yet they were not being shown in the "Members who have read this thread" section right below. For most users, this worked fine; they showed up in both. In some (but not all) cases, those users had been to that thread in the past, and if I clicked on their username for it to pop up the last threads they have visited, it would show the time in the past that they visited that thread, but not the current visit that they were on right now.

I optimized/repaired all tables, reset all counters, and still saw this behavior again afterwards. I'll take a screenshot the next time I see it, but hopefully my description above is reasonably clear.

EDIT: Screenshot attached. My cursor is over the "Eye-a-tollah you buddy" user, and it is showing last visit date of May 21st. He visited the forum, and that specific thread, today. I saw his user ID in the "currently active users viewing this thread" section directly above. Yet his userID wasn't being updated in the "who have read this thread" section. My "who have read this thread" section is sorted by date, not username, so it was easy to see that it wasn't updating correctly.

[Paul M]

The data is updated after the thread is displayed.

[aciurczak]

OK, but the thread was displayed yesterday, and it's still not updated. It never updated, that's the problem. It still says the last time he was at that thread was May 21st, but I saw him visit it on June 18th. I was sitting there watching the screen, refreshed it multiple times, never updated. And it still hasn't.

This may just be coming to light because it's now a requirement to have that "currently viewing this thread" field right there and visible. I have had a hunch for awhile that the "who has read a thread" field may be missing users, as I would send out email links directly to threads, users would come to the site in response, yet it would look as if they only came to the home page and not that thread; their usernames never showed up. That's only a hunch and can't be proven, because if I don't know if they didn't go there, I can't confirm that their username was omitted.

But now, I can, just by looking right above.

[Paul M]

Its not possible to "miss users" if they have actually displayed the thread. The data is updated by the showthread_complete hook, which is called just before the page is output. The only way for it not to happen is if something [else] breaks the plugin/hook.

[aciurczak]

Then something else is evidently breaking the plug-in/hook. I'll take more screenshots when I see the same behavior again. Any suggestions on how to find what else may be using or affecting that hook? I don't have a highly modified board, and most of the hacks (at least most of the useful ones) are yours anyway.