Forum Home Enhancements - Track Guest Visits

As of 23 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.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 modification adds another section to the "What's Going On" area.
It also has seperate pages to display (1) the list of guests, and (2) the pages a particular guest has visited

Options / Features ;

* The ability to turn the whole modification on/off.
* The ability to turn just the forumhome display on/off.
* The ability to allow (or prevent) certain usergroups viewing the forumhome display.
* The ability to switch between 'Today' and Rolling 24 Hours display (default).
* 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.
* The datastore read (for spider detection) will read from the File/APC/Xcache datastore if used [note, not Memcache].
* 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.
* The option to keep a record of [and display] the most ever guests.
* Usergroup permissions are done with the standard vbulleten usergroup permissions system.
* Clicking on the main display icon will list the recent visits by all guests (if allowed).
* Clicking on a Guest type in the main display will list all recent visits by guests of that type (again, if allowed).
* Clicking on the option in the guest listing will show that guests viewing data (if enabled, and allowed).
* The main display can be set as always collapsed on initial page load (4.0.3 +)

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 files.
• If upgrading from a previous version, delete any old trg bitfield xml files from your ../includes/xml/ folder.
• Upload the new bitfields file to 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.
The installation code will turn this on for you.

It is recommended that you visit your Who's Online page after installing this mod (or after updating your spiders file) to make sure your spider definitions are built / rebuilt.


History:


Beta Releases

v4.0.0.2 : 04-Jan-2010 : Initial Beta release for vb 4.0.0 Gold.
v4.0.0.3 : 05-Jan-2010 : Fix scope error in global hook database write.
v4.0.0.5 : 06-Jan-2010 : Second stage Beta - Main Guest List Display added.
v4.0.0.6 : 06-Jan-2010 : Fix IP display error in Guest List Display.

v4.0.1 : 08-Jan-2010 : Initial release for vb 4.0.0 Gold.
v4.0.2 : 09-Jan-2010 : Minor code changes and fixes.
v4.0.3 : 16-Jan-2010 : Added always collapsed option.
v4.0.4 : 20-Feb-2010 : Internal update, not released.
v4.0.5 : 27-Feb-2010 : Style code updates for vB 4.0.2.
v4.0.6 : 19-Sep-2010 : Fix bug in attachment viewing links.
v4.0.7 : 23-Oct-2010 : Fixed for WGO style changes in vB 4.0.8.

v4.1.0 : 04-Dec-2010 : Updated for vBulletin 4.1.

v4.1.7.0 : 16-Oct-2011 : Updated for vBulletin 4.1.7.
v4.1.8.0 : 18-Nov-2011 : Updated for vBulletin 4.1.8 onwards (only).
v4.1.11.0 : 03-Mar-2012 : Updated for vBulletin 4.1.11 image changes.

v4.2.0.0 : 24-May-2012 : Updated for vBulletin 4.2.0.

[tareqbd]

After installing this, I cannot see the guest activity on "who is online" page. How to fix it please.

[Old-Git]

I've just been playing with the latest release on VB 4.2.0 Pl2 and I notice that I sometimes get double entries, witht he same time stamps. After a little playing I think I've found that if a guest double-clicks a thread or forum it appears twice in the log. Anyone else seeing this?

[Old-Git]

Another thought, now that VB 4 has the new Navigation Manager we can incorporate things like static pages into our websites and link to them via a tab on the Navbar. Very useful if you have info that doesn't change very much and that does not need to be in the main database.

Is there anyway of tracking guests who click on these custom tabs?

[Paul M]

Only if the page is within the vbulletin system (i.e. calls global.php).

[Old-Git]

Hi Paul,

thanks for the response. I've just used BirdOprey5's Iframer mod to make this static page thing a lot prettier and following your last post I decided to check to see how Guest Manager dealt with this.

When I click through to 'List of Guests' page on my test rig I can see one visitor with 19 logged visits and (because the last page I visited as a guest was the Iframer configured static web-page) the 'Visit Area' shows Iframer with No Data in the 'Visit Information' column. However when I drill down into the 19 visits (on the 'Single Guest Display' page) all it shows is the 'Visit Information' columns and this shows that my last point of contact was 'Viewing Home Page'.

So 'Visit Area' is picking up on the use of Iframer but 'Visit Information' is not. Don't know if any of that is useful to you or not but I, in my sad little way, found it interesting, LOL!

[Shazz]

To insert manually in vB3 the phrase is

<!-- track guests -->        
                        $guesttitle
    <!-- end track guests -->

What is this in vB4?
Thanks.

[SuperTaz]

Hi Paul,
For some reason the track guests mod is white on custom styles. Is there a template that I am missing here? I would like to change the color to the color of the style.

Thanks

Here is a screen shot:

[Paul M]

Alter the colours in the custom_trg.css template.

[SuperTaz]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Alter the colours in the custom_trg.css template.

Thank you, Sir. It worked great!

[Alibass]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Alter the colours in the custom_trg.css template.

Thanks Paul...