I have added a new feature called Members Online. This counter
shows how many users there are online at this moment. I have it
capped at 199 because it would cause performance issues otherwise.
At a later time, this data wil be cached automatically and as a
result a higher number can be displayed such as 999,999 Members
Online.
What does this number mean and how does it
work?
I created several modes but the first mode is X Members Online
where X is the number of users no matter if they are a guest or
member. There is another mode for example that segregates them into
groups "Members / Guests".
Why is it showing 199+ Members Online?
This happens when the limit has been reached (200) and yes,
those are all unique users.
How does it know?
I check to see the last user activity from said person from
within the past 15 minutes. I will lower this timer to 5 minutes in
time.
How can there be so many people online? Why aren't
they posting?
Most of these people are guests. These can be visitors who
come from a search engine listing or perhaps they were referred
from another way. Unfortunately this counts search engine bots
which crawls the website. I will add a filter for search engines so
they don't appear there.
Why is it showing everyone together instead of
separate?
The reason is because in this early phase of release (We're in
Alpha after all), there aren't that many members who login at the
same time. If I segregated them such as 3 Members / 57 Guests
Online, does that look better to a visitor than 60 Users Online? I
prefer Members to be shown BUT, for the time being and this is very
temporary, it will list the total instead.
Will this data be live?
When the time comes, the data will be cached every 2 or 3
minutes on the back-end and you will see a live refresh. For the
time being, it isn't since I have many other things that take
priority so it will refresh at every page load instead.
Does it count members when they appear
offline?
Yes, even in the future this will be the case. Why? The number
is anonymous and you can't see the list of users who are online.
Should a search feature include online status, being invisible will
not make you appear online obviously.
By the way... Does the friends list also use the same
15 minute timer?
Yes, however... Once you're away for 15 minutes you are
considered "away" and then after 45 minutes you appear offline.
This will change to 10 minutes and 30 minutes in the future. If you
want to beat the timer, you can make yourself appear offline
(invisible). Be warned, you will appear offline the next time you
login no matter what device you sign in from since this is saved to
the database not your device.
Will the online status be placed in more
places?
Yes, but unfortunately this takes time to do and I have other
priorities like making the site mobile friendly and fixing existing
features. Eventually, the online status will appear in many places
but not everywhere because it's resource intensive
(expensive).
I hope this explains a lot about this system, if you have
further questions please ask them in the replies. Thank you!
