Posted by axlq on 07/14/07 00:39

In article <6usf9316qblqv2o9d4ae6547jr20iitqbk@4ax.com>,
Michael Fesser <netizen@gmx.de> wrote:
>.oO(Ciaran)
>>Hi I've seen this a few places - The site lists off the number of
>>people (not logged in) currently browsing the site. How can I do this
>>with php / mySQL please?
>
>You can use rand().
>
>Such "statistics" are never accurate. HTTP is a stateless protocol,
>there's no such thing like a "currently online user". A user comes,
>sends a request, gets a response and is gone. Next request, next user.

The VBulletin software not only says how many users are logged in and
using the forum, but also lists their names.

It is reasonable to assume that for a site like a forum, if a user
logs in, that user will probably still be looking at the forum a
minute after the user's most recent activity. It should be easy to
keep a running database of users whose recent activity is less than,
say, 5 minutes ago. The list could be displayed alphabetically or
sorted by timestamp.

-A

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