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]

Yes.

[KURTZ]

OK thx Paul

[lolo?]

hy paul M thanks for your mod
lokk this with your last beta
Attachment 69723

[m002.p]

Hi Paul, really nice work on this.

I have a suggestion if its possible. I know that you may not have time, but I was wondering if you could perhaps convert the "Google Bot", "MSNBot" etc to icons or put icons before the text.

Here are some icons for reference to this suggestion. I just thought it would "round off" the modification nicely considering some forums have alot of text stats.

Good Work!

[Paul M]

I think that would look a bit odd, and there can be many more spiders than just those default few - I use a spiders file with many more than the vbulletin default.

[m002.p]

Ok, and yes im aware there are more than those. However they are most popular. Im not sure what it would look like, so Is there a way of doing it easily in order to try?

[Fraxter]

My Feedback to the new beta:

Very good new features, the list of details of visitors is i good idea!

And i haven?t found any bugs or errors.

Good work!

greets

Pander23

[Rottimom]

Hello

Sorry my English ist bat Best you look my Screen.

Spider are not announced separately, everything is shown as a visitor (Besucher). ACP is adjusted correctly.
What is wrong?
There is this problem as of version 1.17.
Version 1.16 still was ok.
Version 1.18 installs.
vB3.6.7

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by m002.p

Ok, and yes im aware there are more than those. However they are most popular. Im not sure what it would look like, so Is there a way of doing it easily in order to try?

Since the display of spider names etc is built from a phrase, you could edit the phrase to link to an avatar of the same name. You would need an image for every type.

Originally Posted by Rottimom

Spider are not announced separately, everything is shown as a visitor (Besucher). ACP is adjusted correctly.
What is wrong?

Spider detection works fine in 1.17 & 1.18 so you have a local problem, probably you spiders definition. Try re-uploading the spiders.xml file, also if you re-install this mod it attempts to rebuild vbulletins spider definitions.

[m002.p]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Since the display of spider names etc is built from a phrase, you could edit the phrase to link to an avatar of the same name. You would need an image for every type.

I cant find the names of the spiders in the phrases. I thought they were stored in the spiders.xml on FTP. I could only find the spiders phrase as follows which includes a variable:

{1} Spider

Any help appreciated & thanks for the reply Paul