Who's Online -- How?

[Radon3k]

I'm curious as to how the "Who's Online" functions work. I'm not asking for code, just asking how it's accomplished. I'd like to experiment with this but I'm not even sure where to begin, hence why I'm asking for "background information" as to how it works. Thanks! 🙂

[hkucsis]

One simple way is to use to database to keep track of who is "online".

In ASP, we have "Application" object, so that can be done much more easier.

[superwormy]

Most likely they are just keeping track of the members who visited the page in the last 20 seconds or something, and displaying those.

So everytime someone visits the page, record them as having visited at so and such time, then to get whos online, grab everything where time > NOW() - 20

[kamy99]

there are few articles on this subject floating around.
One of them can be found here:

Spoono