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 SuperNissans

but what permissions exactly do I need to change in the usergroups?

The Guest Tracking permissions.

[bluidkiti]

What if I wanted to put this somewhere else besides the What's Going On box - let's say inaa left side column on my board. How would I do that?

[bluidkiti]

Originally Posted by bluidkiti

What if I wanted to put this somewhere else besides the What's Going On box - let's say inaa left side column on my board. How would I do that?

Never mind - I figured it out myself. :up:

[steveneff]

Thanks Paul very nice mod
Couple of questions about the following setting

"Change this if you want this modifications code to run on all vb pages, not just the forum homepage."

Just wanted to check, does this option if set to No not count visitors that land in a thread and not visit the Forum Home?

If set to yes does it use up much bandwidth/cpu and all that stuff.

[Paul M]

That option actually refers to the display code only. All visitors are counted, no matter where they visit.

[transpetaflops]

Where is the value for "most guests online over 24 hours" stored? I've blocked Yahoo Slurp now and would like to reset it. Search through this thread but couldn't find anything mentioned. Anything special to consider before I do the reset?

[transpetaflops]

Replying to myself here. Not a mysql expert but trying to learn... I found this:

mysql> select * from datastore where title = 'maxloggedin';
+-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-------------+
| title       | data                                                                                                                 | unserialize |
+-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-------------+
| maxloggedin | a:4:{s:13:"maxguestzdate";i:1208349349;s:9:"maxguestz";i:233;s:9:"maxonline";i:2;s:13:"maxonlinedate";i:1208350033;} |           1 | 
+-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-------------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

The "maxguestz" value of 233 is probably the one I need to reset. What puzzles me is that I used the following command to reset the regular max users statistics:

UPDATE datastore SET data = '' WHERE title = 'maxloggedin'

But I fail to see how this command was able to successfully reset only the "maxonline" value since I see no references to it. I would assume that command would wipe the complete record which it didn't do obviously. I'd be most grateful for an explanation and a pointer to how I can modify the command to reset the Guest Tracking stats.

[transpetaflops]

The UPDATE command actually DOES empty the record as expected but something restores the data a few seconds later... now I'm completely confused ;-)

[transpetaflops]

Ah, I guess the data is being restored by the information in the guest table so I have to wait 24 hours before I clear that field. Sorry for the noise.

[Hawaiian-TV]

First of all, thanks for this hack. If it's really working right, we love it.

I hope this hasn't been answered before...

I can't tell right now when the 24 hour "day" begins and ends. It seems at times like the number of visitors in 24 hours goes DOWN in a day rather than up. Please explain!