Forum Home Enhancements - Track Guest Visits

As of 24 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.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 will add (another) section to the "What's Going On" area.

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].
* 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 done with the standard vbulleten usergroup permissions system.
* The option to keep a record of [and display] the most ever guests can be enabled.

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 XML files.
• Upload the bitfields file to your ../includes/xml folder.
• If upgrading from a previous version, delete the old bitfield xml file from 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.

Template Hook

Please note that this modification uses the following template hook in the FORUMHOME template ;

forumhome_wgo_pos2

This must be present in any customised template/style you are using, otherwise this modification will not display.


History:

v3.8.001 : Initial vb 3.8 release.
v3.8.002 : Fix install code SQL error.
v3.8.003 : Fix bug in attachment viewing links.

[Paul M]

This works off the forumhome_complete hook, not forumhome_start.

[SamirDarji]

Thank you Paul!

So if I would change the hook location to forumhome_complete and then evaluate the template, would I have access to the $gueststoday variable?

[Paul M]

I have no idea, as I dont know whats in the template, or the rest of the code, but it wont work unless you swap the hook name.

[SamirDarji]

I don't even know what's going on in that code, so you're ahead of me.

The template just uses the $gueststoday variable, so if changing that hook will allow the variables to pass to the template from your plugin, I think we'd be set.

[MissKalunji]

This one is so much better. thank yoU!

[Alfa1]

Feature request / suggestion:

If useragent is disallowed in robots.txt then display the user in red colour.

This allows the admin to quickly identify bots that do not respect robots.txt

[Max Taxable]

Just found this... Installed, works great right out of the box.

Special note after reading this entire thread: Paul's patience seems limitless!


EDIT to add - This is greatly enhanced by the updated spider definitions xml!

[DEGE]

Hi everybody. Have a great new year !!

I'm using this hack and found out that even with the last spiders.xml definition file, there are some listed entries that do not reflect real spiders.

2-ene-12, 16:18 Visitor No attachment 74.125.156.83 Viewing Attachment 683
2-ene-12, 16:18 Visitor No attachment 74.125.64.95 Viewing Attachment 683

If you ping the IP there is no info related, but if you query the IP information with some IP2Loc page, you find out that this is Google:

http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/74.125.64.95

Is there any way to get a list of this unnamed IPs and add them to the local DNS so that the server solves them properly?

Regards

[EliasAlucard]

Any vB4.2 version coming soon?

[Paul M]

I suggest you look in my profile