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online users

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online users
just now saw 776 users online within the past 15 mins, and 99% are guests. i am quite wondering this number, see these guests' actions, how come 8 - 10 guests always do the same actions at the same time? can gforum show up guest's ip on online users page? has this statistics been dupe-calculated?

Last edited by:

sh2sg: May 15, 2002, 8:45 AM
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Re: [sh2sg] online users In reply to
Oops, after posted the above post, check online page again .... 48 guests now! strange...
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Re: [sh2sg] online users In reply to
This happens when a search engine, or offline downloader or some other malicious thing (like somebody trying to benchmark the server) is accessing the page automatically many times a second/minute.

Ivan
-----
Iyengar Yoga Resources / GT Plugins
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Re: [yogi] online users In reply to
It is not normal, so should be corrected.
Guest identifying could be done several ways from cookie to IP identifying.

Jagerman?

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Re: [webmaster33] online users In reply to
Im pretty sure this was implemented in earlier versions but removed for good reason...I can't find the relevant thread though.
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Re: [Paul] online users In reply to
Maybe Jagerman will be able to tell us more about this.
It would be unnecessary to discuss further about, without having any info about it.

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Re: [webmaster33] online users In reply to
....only staff good enough for you now hey ;)

However I do remember the reason, if I may have permission to speak sir, please let me know.
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Re: [Paul] online users In reply to
No, no, I just not wanted to talk about something we don't know either.

Eh, and I just wanted to close the discussion, to be able to go back to my work. Wink

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Re: [webmaster33] online users In reply to
>>
No, no, I just not wanted to talk about something we don't know either.
<<

The reason was because some people use proxy servers so if you track by IP then you may end up blocking many people.
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Re: [Paul] online users In reply to
Nope, that's why the X-Forwarded feature exists for (most?) proxies.
Proxies adds this info to the header, so we can filter out using this. ...If "X-Forwarded" exists...etc.

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Re: [webmaster33] online users In reply to
Thats far from reliable...it isn't used by all proxy servers. Squid only does it in acceleration mode.

Also:

http://web.systhug.com/...tract_forwarded.html

...it relies on apache config.
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Re: [webmaster33] online users In reply to
This was implemented on earlier versions of Gossamer Forum but was later removed. I'm not sure if this was a Gossamer Forum function or an Apache directive.

Anyhow, the thread in question is most probably in the Chit Chat forum. The reason it was removed was that some users that opened multiple messages in multiple windows were blocked from the forum for x amount of seconds, and this caused some frustration. Basically there is no way to differentiate between a robot, off-line downloader, or just a very fast forum user.

These days, I believe this setup here has a list of allowed and disallowed robots, probably just using Apache directives, and when a disrespectful robot hits the site it simply gets blocked. Robots are meant to follow standards and are suppose to only spider x amount of pages per second/minute, but many robots ignore these rules.

Fortunately, we've seen that Gossamer Forum on *this* server setup has managed to withstand many robot "attacks" as mentioned by Alex in a thread in the Chit Chat forum again. And as long as the server can handle the extra load, then Alex seemed more than happy for the robot to spider the site's contents for obvious reasons.

Update: Here are some of the threads that discussed this when Gossamer Forum was first released:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=180588
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=176310

Update 2: And here's my initial complaint :-)

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=164161

- wil

Last edited by:

Wil: May 16, 2002, 3:19 AM
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Re: [Paul] online users In reply to
Algorithm:
- Cookie is checked/used first.
- If no cookie, we check if we have X-Forwarded, and use the last IP address, to distinguish.
- If no X-Forwarded, we use the IP to distinguish each Guest from others.

This is only about to find out how many Guests are browsing on our forums. I think, this is the most accurate solution to find out how many Guest users are there right now on our forums, and I don't see any reason why not to use something similar algorithm.
Which will be more accurate? The current solution, or the one I suggested here?
What is the chance, that more than 10%-20% of the users are using the same proxy, which does not use X-Forwarded header addition?

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Re: [webmaster33] online users In reply to
Obviously the guys at GT know about these things...if they removed it, it means it wasn't appropriate.

...anyway cookies can be faked.

Last edited by:

Paul: May 16, 2002, 3:22 AM
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Re: [Wil] online users In reply to
Robots are very helpful. They help the site live.
I just suggested to make the "Online users" feature more accurate.
We can even do by ignoring "Guests with IP-s of those known robots". And we stepped a bit forward for more accurate results.

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Re: [webmaster33] online users In reply to
Aha. Sorry, i obviously didn't catch onto the theme of this thread correctly.

If it was up to me, I would do away with the Guest Users on the Who's Online page anyway. I've mentioned this before somewhere, I think. I'm only interested in what the Registered Members are doing. :-)

- wil
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Re: [Paul] online users In reply to
We don't know the reason, why they removed it.
We will only know when, somebody from the staff will reply here.
That's was I told you, before we started this hot discussion Wink

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Re: [Wil] online users In reply to
Yep, I agree 100% with you!

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Re: [webmaster33] online users In reply to
I give up.

Last edited by:

Paul: May 16, 2002, 3:52 AM
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Re: [Paul] online users In reply to
Well, I finished the discussion from my part. We discussed all the problems in details, although we did not made a deal. Wink
I'm just curious, what is the option of staff about the discussed problem.

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Re: [webmaster33] online users In reply to
Gossamer Forum does keep track of guests. When you visit Gossamer Forum, you will be given a guest ID that is added to your URL's. Unfortunately, the search engine templates (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/forum) doesn't (and cannot) use the guest parameter, so each request counts as a new guest. A normal spider following normal GForum URL's won't show up as multiple guests.

Jason Rhinelander
Gossamer Threads
jason@gossamer-threads.com
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Re: [Jagerman] online users In reply to
Would not be better to have a correct, tracked list of online users?
I really don't see useful listing of guests, if they are not really tracked, and many times shows incorrect guest numbers.

Moreover, if I'm curious about what the guests are doing now (just as interesting info for me), but I see 897 guests, I really don't know, what those few real users are doing.

EDIT: I would really not want extra work for you, just it is not fine to have a feature which is not doing, what would expect.

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Last edited by:

webmaster33: May 16, 2002, 10:29 PM
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Re: [Jagerman] online users In reply to
Just the 1 more idea.

Would be possible to display number of all users online (hidden+visible)? Of course hidden user will be still not listed on the online users page.

Example:
14 registered users (11 hidden) have accessed the forum in the last 15 minutes:
Code:
Username Title Location Time seen
webmaster33 User Who's Online May 18, 2002, 1:22 PM
searchposts New User Viewing category list May 18, 2002, 1:16 PM (4:28 AM)
brewt Staff Viewing category list May 18, 2002, 1:16 PM (4:28 AM)

I don't think this would irritating anyone, but would show the real number of current online users...

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