User online statistics buggy?

borish · January 19, 2014, 04:24:27 PM

Right now, my info center shows 1 guest, 10 members online. Below however, it claims: most online today: 2, most online ever: 2 (1st January). Strange. I use SMF 2.0.6.

Arantor · January 19, 2014, 05:18:55 PM

That's online over how long a period?

borish · January 19, 2014, 05:31:14 PM

I see: "Users online: 1 guest, 10 members. Active users in the last 60 minutes: ... (10 are shown)"

Arantor · January 19, 2014, 05:33:45 PM

Hmm.

I forget exactly how 2.0 grabbed that, but I do know that it is made inaccurate if that number is exaggerated because by setting that number that high, you're actually misrepresenting user online status.

If a user is shown as online in the forum (e.g. the little green/white block next to their name), they will be shown as online for an entire hour after they leave your forum (unless they explicitly log out) which is why we normally set it to 15 minutes (because they could just be reading a long thread and not refreshing)

borish · January 19, 2014, 05:52:45 PM

So it's a bug in 2.0.6?

Kindred · January 19, 2014, 06:25:18 PM

no. it's a bug in your setting

Arantor · January 19, 2014, 06:39:46 PM

That said there can be an issue with it not updating the stats properly if there's certain other conditions in play (like incorrectly configured server)

borish · January 20, 2014, 04:18:14 AM

I don't know how my host configured its server and I can't change this configuration.

But there's a mismatch between the "users online" counter and the "most users online" statistics. Right now, the info center shows 4 members online and also their names and I see 4 green bullets in the member list. Still, "most users online today" shows 2 and "most users online ever" also 2. This is faulty.

I don't know which forum setting I may have misconfigured. I set the login-cookie to expire in 60 minutes and I left the session expiration time at 2880 (I don't know how this differs from the login-cookie-time).

Arantor · January 20, 2014, 09:44:21 AM

The user online threshold, which is normally set to 15.

numbro · January 20, 2014, 12:09:22 PM

Can you provide a link to your site?

borish · January 20, 2014, 02:38:01 PM

Quote from: Sir Cumber-Patcher on January 20, 2014, 09:44:21 AM
The user online threshold, which is normally set to 15.

I set it to 15 some hours ago, but the problem persists. Besides, if I can set the user online threshold, SMF should work with whatever threshold I may choose.

borish · January 21, 2014, 09:23:51 AM

Same problem today. Different to this forum here, my forum shows "most online past 60 minutes". Don't know if the online threshold has anything to do with the problem.

borish · January 27, 2014, 04:46:45 PM

If there's no solution to the problem, how can I deactivate the "most online" display?

It's stuck at "most online ever: 2 (1st Jan 2014, 20:47)".

azasmith · January 28, 2014, 01:07:44 AM

It's never bothered me, and it probably won't help Borish get to the bottom of his issue, but I moved my SMF install to a new host in mid November, I had 141 members registered at the time. Standard procedure, export database, backup files, move over etc etc. When the transfer had completed and the site was live again, I had the following stat: Most Online Ever: 141 (12-11-2013, 16:39:16).

It seems it's counted all of my members as logged in at the time. Hopefully when I do actually get more than 141 logged in, the stat will update again. *fingers crossed*

EDIT: I've fixed it. Sort of. You have to reset the Most online ever counter. But it's now counting properly. To fix, log into your database via phpmyadmin. Scroll down the list on the side until you see smf_settings (assuming your tables are default smf_, find settings anyway. Click this, and scroll down until you see mostOnline (it was on page 2 for me) click edit and remove the number from the bottom box so the box is empty, then click Go.

Return to your forum, go to Admin > Maintenance > Forum Maintenance > Routine, and run Recount all forum totals and statistics.

What I posted above, now says the following: Most Online Ever: 4 (Today at 06:06:11) (So any views you had previously, it won't count. But it will count to more than 2. Which is always a Brucie Bonus!)

Usual warnings apply, make sure you have a recent backup of the db just in case you click the wrong thing or something. Follow the guide above and only remove the number from mostOnline and you'll be fine.

borish · January 29, 2014, 02:02:49 PM

After I removed the mostOnline value in the db and run recount stats, the info center didn't show any numbers at all. Now I've remove mostOnline, mostOnlineToday and mostDate and run recount stats. It shows now
Am meisten online (heute): . Am meisten online (gesamt): (01 Januar 1970, 01:00)

Still bad. It appears that recount stats just retrieves the values from the db instead of calculating them.

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User online statistics buggy?