Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Suggestion: Users Online

Basic forum function, but I don't see it here yet. Let users set, in their profile, whether to see if users are online on the forum. If they choose no, they show as "anonymous". It can really help smooth along RP on RPR's forum-chats IMO. It's nice to know, when I'm posting this thread, just how many people might be browsing it or even have a chance to. Should I bother burning my eyes out at 3 AM waiting for a reply, or is everyone sensible and in bed like I should be? I don't know! It doesn't necessarily have to be by every thread, although that could be handy. But I'd like to know when my potential friends are online (without having to click everyone's profile and see ONLINE one at a time), or when people in general are.

Example:

24 user(s) reading our forums. 21 anonymous, darth_angelus, kim, Minerva

Or whatever. Just let people tick on the anonymous feature and it should remove potential privacy fears. Also, if this could be extended to the profiles themselves it'd be epic. I'd love to check my friend's page and see some sort of "Online" indicator beyond the current, but Online indicated when they log in until X amount of idle time. Potential options could even be "Yes, show that I am online" "No, do not show when I am online" "Yes, show when I am online and/or my last login activity" as in, "User Minerva is offline. Last online at 00:00:00"

Current ideas x minor tweaks, basically.";

*Addendum: I probably didn't make it clear. I'm aware the chats will say "1 person in the chat". I'm aware profiles can tell you an individual is online. I just don't see an overall per-board feature rather than thread-chat, and those are the people potential to wander in.

We'd need some new database code to tell who is looking at what forum. As much as I like the idea I'm sort of holding off on asking more of our databases at the moment, because we are rapidly approaching the capacity of what they can handle without expensive upgrades.

I'm not understanding what you want changed about the online indicator on profiles. Can you elaborate on that?

Kim; You can see examples on some Proboards forums. It usually has '(number) currently viewing' for the individual thread, and then at the bottom of the main screen it usually has '(number) users online, (number) guest, CelestinaGrey, Kim'. Things like that. Does that explain it a little more?

I like this idea

Celestina, I think she understands that aspect. She was talking more about my other part of the suggestion.

Right now, if you view someone's profile it displays "Online" or "Offline", as well as an indicator of their last post/activity type. Uploads etc. But that doesn't necessarily mean that was the last time they were online. They might wait for one, two hours for someone to post on a specific thread before going, refreshing and renewing their sign in data at the server. They might log on and off without doing anything, if seeing no signs of promise. It would be neat to have an optional display that tells someone my last Online activity was two hours after I did anything. So "User Minerva is Offline. Last activity 11:24 AM" or "last activity 1 hr, 15 minutes ago" would be nifty. Of course, make it something people who want privacy can toggle off, but it can help people who have conflicting schedules figure out other people's availability and when they can be more active. I could say "Damn, I missed Meedleboot by ten minutes. I should log on sooner next time!"

I understand not wanting to burden the database any more right now. But it's definitely an idea I'd love for the future. Also, what do you write this in? What kinda database are you running? And would you accept outside help?

Thanks Celestina. I was asking about the other bit though.

Minerva, I think you are thinking that "Online Now" means that they signed in at some point and have not yet logged out? It actually only says someone is online if they had activity within the last five minutes. If they have the browser open but walked away to have coffee an hour ago, they won't be listed as active. I'll consider adding some indication of last login for offline folks, I could see there being use in that.

The site is run through server-side PHP and client-side Javascript. The database is MySQL. I might accept outside help for some aspects. We've had several people work on templates in the past, and I have adored that.

Nah, I figured it has to do with the activity being recent, not immediate. The server not receiving any new pings = Offline, I know that. What I'm saying is. It'd be nice for my friend to log in and, instead of seeing "Offline" s/he could see "Offline since ______ (Time Zone)" Or "Offline for two hours".

PHP and MySQL... I might actually be able to look into that, my chat runs on that. The only difference is the Java but I think my friend built his site off of our client x Java. If someone designed the code to display users online for the forum, would you accept it? "Accept" doesn't mean "Apply right now", since you're worried about database strain but... yeah. :p

Whoa, careful! Java and javascript are (confusingly) two entirely separate languages and never the twain shall meet. There's no Java anywhere on the site, and probably never will be as it tends to require people to download and update too many plugins for my tastes. The only plugin thingy we have anywhere is the world's teensiest tiniest flash script in the chat. It plays the stapler noise when a message arrives.

To write a patch that would keep track of what users are looking at the forum, you would need access to our database structure and make changes to it in order to have a place to record and look up forum accesses. I really can't give that out to anyone; it is full of important private information, not to mention if anything went wrong in trying to modify it to work with your script, you could bring the whole site down.

The actual code writing would be fairly simple for me to pull off, I suspect it's a 30-60 minute project. I just want to see our forums get into shape to respond faster than they sometimes do before I make another database call on those pages.

I really do appreciate the offer and the enthusiasm, it is quite touching!

See, I don't even notice any sense of delay here. Dialup and all.

Sorry, Javascript, my bad. I know the difference, twas more a fault of lazy typing than ignorance.