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: as of v3.34 you can only view the ip addresses in the 'View-All' display).

There is now 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.

A new time set/reset facility has been added. Members allowed to use this facility can click on the 'set' link and it will set a personal 'cutoff' time - only showing who has read the thread after that time. The time can be reset as many times as you want, 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.

A cron job has now been added that can (optionally) delete 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.

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.


There are 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.

New in v3.28

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.

New in v3.39

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.


History:

v3.20 : First Release for vb 3.6, a few code changes.
v3.21 : Dependancies updated for 3.6.0 Gold.
v3.22 : Updated for Version Checking.
v3.23 : Internal Development version.
v3.24 : Internal Development version.
v3.25 : Internal Development version.
v3.26 : Internal Development version.
v3.27 : Private release.
v3.28 : Public release of new features.
v3.29 : Fixed bug in clean-up, the setting was hours, not days.
v3.30 : Added options to disable/change auto template insert (not released).
v3.31 : Internal Code Changes, Settings Group renamed.
v3.32 : Minor template change.
v3.33 : SQL Changes to use slave.
v3.34 : Added new template for username display code, made 'View-All' always available.
v3.35 : Added last post marker to 'View-All' display.
v3.36 : Fix uncached templates.
v3.37 : Fixed missing date/time display when 'set' function is used.
v3.38 : Moved auto-template options to mods main settings group.
v3.39 : Version infomation added, display of user thread reading activity added.
v3.40 : Bugfix : Correct bugs reported in posts #308 & #318.
v3.41 : Minor changes to install code only.

[Paul M]

Define 'expensive'

A name is only listed once, no matter how many times they read the thread - 300/400 readers per thread is quite a lot, are you sure all your threads are really read by that many ?

Anyway, 300 names will be about an extra 9K/Bytes on the page (as a reasonable guess).

[Tom_S]

Since he has 14.931 members I would say that is highly possible. Wow! That is a huge number for daily traffic for shared hosting.

[cirdok2]

Originally Posted by Paul M

A name is only listed once, no matter how many times they read the thread - 300/400 readers per thread is quite a lot, are you sure all your threads are really read by that many ?

I am pretty sure because I read the number from... your script
Some threads (announcements of new functions) have more than 550 readers...
(even if in the weekend the traffic is lower)

Originally Posted by Paul M

Anyway, 300 names will be about an extra 9K/Bytes on the page (as a reasonable guess).

thanks. Since the visualization is allowed just for the admins (two of us), I guess this is not a big deal.

Ehm... the names visualization is the only thing that affects the bandwidth?
I mean enabling (without visualization) or disabling it, from the bandwidth point of view is the same?

Sorry if the question sounds trivial or dumb, but I really like this hack, it is very useful for administration purposes.

Originally Posted by Tom_S

Since he has 14.931 members I would say that is highly possible. Wow! That is a huge number for daily traffic for shared hosting.

Few days ago we shifted on a VPS, same hosting; now we are comparing the bandwidth used beetween the old and new server, this is why I am asking these trivial questions about the bandwidth usage (I added this hack after the "moving on").
BTW, the hosting is doing a really great work, even if when we were on their "pure" shared hosting, the website was always fast and reliable (and the support very quick, that is what I like the most, as per vbulletin, both .com and .org :up: ).

Thank you guys!

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by cirdok2

Ehm... the names visualization is the only thing that affects the bandwidth?
I mean enabling (without visualization) or disabling it, from the bandwidth point of view is the same?

Sorry if the question sounds trivial or dumb, but I really like this hack, it is very useful for administration purposes.

The extra bandwidth is because the list of names is passed as part of the page, if you disable the display of names, then there will be no exta bandwidth.

[cirdok2]

Originally Posted by Paul M

The extra bandwidth is because the list of names is passed as part of the page, if you disable the display of names, then there will be no exta bandwidth.

cool, thank you.

[Simasher]

thanks for this hack

[Mrdby]

QUESTION? I would like members to see who has viewed a thread as well without being able to view ip addresses. Possible?

[Paul M]

As it says, the view IP and view readers are separate permissions ;

There are 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.

So yes, just set it up correctly in the settings.

[BOLT]

Paul, when I try and upload it from my computer it says

XML Error: not well-formed (invalid token) at Line 1

[Paul M]

You have a duff file, download it again.