can we get any info (details) on guests with then visit our board

[TheDragon]

hey gang - been gone a few years (literally)
but the board I made for a friend keep been working great  -- so I leave it alone
http://www.vcsy-chat.com/html/forum.html 43000 posts etc
anyway, it has been avg 80 users at one time for year or so
and today popped to 129 at one time
so my pal called and asked me if I could determine how/why etc
the forum is a private chat room (open to any new members - but they do not promote it outside of their circle)
which is shareholders in a small public company

so ....?/

thanks

[Shambles]

That shows as a SMF 2.0.4 setup, not  SMF 2.1.x

[m4z]

What would those "details" be that you want to know about your guests? SMF can basically only give you their IP (and hostname, if lookup is enabled). For everything else, you can (read: need to) look at the web server logs (basically the only other info there is the Referrer and browser User Agent string) or need additional tracking software that records these kinds of things (browser language, screen resolution, etc.).

Edit: Forgot referrer.

[efk]

it has been avg 80 users at one time for year or so
and today popped to 129 at one time

From my experience, it happened that on new forum single guy came on my call with vpn or not sure what exactly and it was displayed like there are more than 5 guests, but it was just a single guy who was displayed like that. At first I thought that somehow guests founds us through google, but no, just a single guy shown as many guests. Also can be bots, I used old forum for years and most visits ever at single time was less than 650 and forum was very active for years, on another newer forum I had bots attack for few days and noticed 2 days that there are 700+ guests even if forum was still new and bellow 400 members in total.

[TheDragon]

What would those "details" be that you want to know about your guests? SMF can basically only give you their IP (and hostname, if lookup is enabled).

where are browser logs? part of SMF? (sorry for asking -- pretty rusty on the program)
where do I enable "lookup"
if bots - how would I know

all the requested info is not critical
just that site admin was very curious

thanks all !

[m4z]

What would those "details" be that you want to know about your guests? SMF can basically only give you their IP (and hostname, if lookup is enabled).

where are browser logs? part of SMF? (sorry for asking -- pretty rusty on the program)

The web server logs are on the server. Depending on your hosting situation, you might have access to them via SSH, a website management tool like cpanel, or not at all.

where do I enable "lookup"

I don't know exactly where it is and don't have access to a 2.0 forum currently. But it shouldn't be hard to find, the option is labeled "Disable hostname lookups". (Depending on your hosting situation, this can cause problems, because every lookup is a (short running) process. If the number of processes is limited (as seems to be the case for many free or almost-free hosters), this could bite you.)

if bots - how would I know

Some bots are coming from "known" domains, but you'd have to google the details yourself. Some bots show it in their User Agent string.
(SMF 2.1 has some bot detection code, but I don't know if that code is in 2.0 too.)

[Illori]

Some bots are coming from "known" domains, but you'd have to google the details yourself. Some bots show it in their User Agent string.
(SMF 2.1 has some bot detection code, but I don't know if that code is in 2.0 too.)

SMF 2.0 has the same, it has to be enabled under core features in the admin panel.

[TheDragon]

thanks again to all for the ideas