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]

Originally Posted by firstrebel

Getting back to my difficulty uninstalling this product a few pages back, I though I had now fully removed it as I intended installing an earlier verson then working up.

But in ACP -> vBulletin Options it shows a gap in the list where this product was. This suggests it is not totally removed. Any ideas please?

Thanks

Bob

That's the auto-template options, it's a shared section used by some of my other mods as well - sadly the idea doesn't work very well as removing the last one installed deletes the options phrase. If you reinstall one of the others (like visitors today) it will restore the phrase. Future versions will not use this sharing due to this flaw.

[Code Monkey]

Is there a 3.54 version of this mod?

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

Is there a 3.54 version of this mod?

Nope, sorry, there isn't - nor, I'm afraid, will there ever be one.

Most of my 3.5 stuff is no longer fully supported, and anything new is only for the current vb version. All my 3.5 stuff will be out of support by the summer. I simply don't have the time/resources to maintain old versions.

[loonytune15]

I am also having probs with the hack only showing visitors

Pm sent.

[Paul M]

Your spider cache was broken (the unserialize bit was not set in the datastore).

I have fixed that for you locally so your spiders will start to show again.

While I can (and will) add a bit of code to the install routine that will fix spider caches broken in this way, I cannot tell you how you managed to do it (which means that whatever happened could happen again).

[loonytune15]

could this of happened to others as well?

May have happened when i switched server

[loonytune15]

G'day paul, sorry to bother you again, but me thinks the cache has broken again???

i am only getting visitors again..

[misticjeff]

Sorry to be a bother here but I don't have time to read through 26 pages of this thread.

Will this mod track guests I.P. addresses and if not, is there a way to make it do so? I had a mod similar to this on a Xoops site a while back and it tracked guest I.P. addresses which was helpful.

[Paul M]

The ip address of all visitors is recorded, but atm it is not displayed anywhere, you would need your own code to query it.

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by loonytune15

G'day paul, sorry to bother you again, but me thinks the cache has broken again???

i am only getting visitors again..

Yes it has broken again - I took a closer look and a product called vbBOL (Shows spiders/bots in who's online) is breaking it - the code was written for vb3.5.

To fix the broken cache run this sql query ;

update datastore set unserialize = 1 where title = 'wol_spiders'