Forum Home Enhancements - Track Guest Visits

This modification is no longer available or supported.

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 the vb 3.6 version, delete the bitfield_track-guests.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 - and now a more recent version is available from this site.

Note: For Spider detection to work you must set Enable Spider Display to 'Yes' in vBulletin Options > Who's Online Options.


History:

v3.7.001 : Initial vb 3.7 release.
v3.7.002 : Fix for cron_script hook changed in 3.7 Beta 4.
v3.7.003 : Header, Navbar and Footer added to guest display pages.
v3.7.004 : Tracking of visits to archive pages added.

[mikeinjersey]

I just installed this. Does it take a little time to gather information? Nothing is being shown yet.

Also, is there a way to just seperate the Real visitors from the Spiders ? It would be nice to have a seperate option to show 'who is online' to eliminate all spiders and ONLY have the number of real people visiting and block all the spiders.

This plugin is helpful because normal vBulletin without any mods displays spiders and visitors combined...this one can atleast seperate the 2. My goal is to completely eliminate the numbers of spiders and only show visitors to regular users... although in a seperate area (unseen from regular members) it could display to spiders to me so that I could tell if im getting alot of hits from regular members or if its just a spider surge.

If there is another plugin out there that someone might know of aware of , i'd appreciate it.

[mikeinjersey]

I got the stuff to display...didnt have usergroup settings enabled. sorry about that.

But the other question ^^ im still interested in. That would also be a great thing for usergroup permissions as well. To enable Members to ONLY see the real human visitor number that are visiting the site..and eliminating the spider stuff completely.

great plugin by the way.

[Paul M]

Hmm, seperate permissions for visitors and spiders, not sure many people would really need that tbh. Still, I'll think about it.

[mikeinjersey]

I think it would be the 'Purest' and most greatest thing. This way they are totally seperated and what you see are Actual human visitors...no bots of any kinds and thats the ONLY number that is show on the forum. It would be great to have that I do believe. An optional thing though.

For instance regular members only see that.....and moderators could see the detailed stuff if they wish.

I dont think it would be too difficult to incorporate...I was searching mods today and couldnt find even one that had that.

The only slight negative effect for people initially is that your "currently active users" number would be much lower and some people might not want to take that risk... even myself, I fear if people see the numbers declining alot...they may decide this is a crappy forum and they wont hang around.

[dt_truck11]

*installed*

great hack

[StRiKeR035]

ok i have this mod and it tells me this 05-26-2008, 08:49 AM Visitor No register 58.83.45.91 Member Registration for bobo69x11
05-26-2008, 08:07 AM Visitor No register 121.204.36.216 Member Registration for lovetxtin
05-26-2008, 06:55 AM Visitor No register 74.85.13.52 Member Registration for cdef174
and much more and when i click on these so called members it tells me they dont appear even regisered so ive had aabout 29 guests register and none of them show up on my registered user count in the stats i dont no if its a mod interfearecne or or something i did wrong

[russbo]

As usual, perfect design, flawless execution. Thanks Paul!

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by StRiKeR035

ok i have this mod and it tells me this 05-26-2008, 08:49 AM Visitor No register 58.83.45.91 Member Registration for bobo69x11
05-26-2008, 08:07 AM Visitor No register 121.204.36.216 Member Registration for lovetxtin
05-26-2008, 06:55 AM Visitor No register 74.85.13.52 Member Registration for cdef174
and much more and when i click on these so called members it tells me they dont appear even regisered so ive had aabout 29 guests register and none of them show up on my registered user count in the stats i dont no if its a mod interfearecne or or something i did wrong

The fact they are on the registration page does not mean they sucessfully registered.

[bitbender]

Those are most likely bot registration attempts... I see them on my test 3.7 with this mod...

PaulM, congrats, I really like this one. I have forever wanted to know what were guest counts and what were spider counts.

[StRiKeR035]

o ok so it tells me they registered as "name" and since they didnt regester successfully they dont exist?