How many users are online

Anon

Is there any code that will tell how many people are on the website at once, so these stats can be visible to the users in real time? (well each time they hit refresh it will probably change)

Anon

did you even TRY to do a search on these discussion groups before posting such a dead horse? This thing has been beaten to death in many, many other threads. Try man. Search...follow instructions, rtfm.

Anon

Amen Tom!

btw. has anyone every looked at those numbers that tell you how many other people are browsing the site?

Anon

Why on earth would you want that? If it's that important, wouldn't it be easier to have some MySQL based authentication and then just have a page that checks the status of all your registered users? That way you could show 'xx out of xx' are logged on.

In my experience stats are only ever useful as a monthly tool for managers who know nothing about IT. And even then they are not that useful. I use Analog, which I've found to be one of the best, but even then the stats are misleading and you have to really dig to interpret them. I'm sure I don't get the millions of hits it says I do!!

If stats are that important to your project, I think you need to re-evaluate the way your project's success is being measure. If it's just a gimmicky tool for the users of your site, I would look at whether it adds any real value.

-- Nick Gushlow

Anon

I've got stats all over the place that run at the server level. I just thought it would be neat for users to see how many other people are on the site at once.

Anon

Once again the open-source community rears it's ugly head. Why is it that 25% of the community is so willing to help everyone out and the rest immediately tell you how stupid your idea is and how there are 50 better things to do...without ever really giving a distinct answer other than rtfm. Must be that the later portion were born with an inherent knowledge and never had to ask a newbie question. I am willing to bet that there isn't one person here who couldn't figure out how to do the simplest thing after reading five different books and had to post to a board or ask in a channel for how to do it (usually to get 50 flames in response instead of an answer).

Ryan I would love to help you but I ADMITTEDLY don't have answer...good luck.

Anon

we'll i'm sorry i posted it. i did a search found a lot of code that DIDN'T work, then found a german site that had it and now it's ok. I've seen a lot of sites that run asp that use it, but i'm not going there. so i figured since php is cool and all i'd go for it. but i guess most of these php guys are just above everyone else.

after looking at the code, its pretty simple what they do. they echo your ip to a mysql db, check for duplicates, if there are duplicate ip's they ignore them and use only one ip, then print out the number of different ip's. you set the time it will delete these ip's from your db, such as 1-5 minutes, so you db does not get too huge.

Anon

Hi Guys

Yeah I aggree, a few people are getting really up themselves! Maybe it's this happy time of year that's put them in such a good mood?!?

Its not always the developer who defines the requirements of a system specification, a client may request (and demand) facilities that you dont agree with... this is the real world folks!

I have just started using phpOpenCounter which returns a range of stats including the nuber of users (altough I havnt validated its figures yet!) it can be found at http://sourceforge.net

HTH

Chris

Anon

http://www.phpbuilder.com/forum/read.php3?num=2&id=109044&loc=0&thread=109042
http://www.phpbuilder.com/forum/read.php3?num=2&id=111757&loc=0&thread=111721
http://www.phpbuilder.com/forum/read.php3?num=2&id=112889&loc=0&thread=112889

Here are three seperate discussions on this exact same issue. I found the with a simple search of 'online users'.

You should not expect these forums to provide exact code for your implementation...use them for problem solving instead, but don't abuse them by posting every problem without researching.

Fortunatly ryan has had his problem solved now, but the initial mistake here was not realizing this wheel has already been invented and documented.

Personally, I'm not involved with any open source projects, but I am involved heavily with many non-profit projects. I never read books about languages...there's enough material out on the net that language-specific books are a waste of trees.

If you want good books:
Code Complete
Rapid Development
Pragmatic Programmer (not as good as the first two, but ok).

Look for books on how to program better and realize there are sources on the net with archives.

So, allow me to rephrase and say: RTFO(nline)M.

Tom

Anon

Ryan i don't have the answer to your question, i am mearly commenting on users who bag other users for posting questions that have been asked before..

If you gonna bag users for thier posts at least have the answer to thier question, that way there will be 1 more post out there for the next person to search for...

Why waste time baggin people when you could use the time to post the answer....

Regards

Anon

"Why waste time baggin people when you could use the time to post the answer.... "

Because if we kept blindly answering every question over and over again, people will never learn that they should search for the answers themselves before they post their question. The forum archives are brimming over with knowledge about xⁿ things. But if people don't use it we might aswell stop.

"Give a man a bread and he has food for a day, teach him how to bake bread and he has food for a lifetime."

Anon

Actually, this is a very useful for interactive sites where people collaborate or function in anyway with people in realtime.

Maybe it does not fit into your definition of what is viable to program in PHP, but lay off the newbies. You were there once, too...

Anon

except 1 you are **** idiots

write the user in a DB
delete him after few minutes...
consider that a live user
and return the number of live users
to your webpage!

dan

[deleted]

Thanks dan, that was a very usefull post.

sigh