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Recent Visitors to Website

Forums: Suggestions and Feedback
Created on: 02/23/10 02:40 PM Views: 2038 Replies: 12
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 2:40 PM

How about a summary box on the home page -- similar to the "Profile Updates" box -- but showing who's been on the website lately.

Perhaps with an admin choice of how many to display in the box to start with -- and permitting scrolling down to see more.

Maybe with a "last 24 hours" cutoff option or "last 7 days" cutoff option?

Having other visitors see some friends have been at the website recently might help build participation?

IdeaQuestion

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Edited 02/23/10 2:44 PM
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 3:51 PM - Response #1

The one major problem we hit with this type of request in the past is numerous people were against it. In fact the fear is it may actually lessen participation on your site as opposed to increasing it. Doesn't sound like it on a surface level I know, but if you start logging people and displaying their activity on your site's home page think about what happens:

Sally Smith enjoys logging onto the web site all the time to participate. But, she's doing it from work 23 times a day. Which is far more common than you might expect by the way, one of the heaviest usage periods is during work hours, when people are logging in from their job. Regardless of work though, maybe Sally doesn't want you logging and displaying her name every single time she comes to the web site. In fact you doing that may lessen her desire to visit the site so regularly.

These were the concerns that surfaced here in the past about this. For this reason and the collective voice of the Admins we elected to not log and display login sessions, and let people visit the site as often as they want without leaving tracks behind.


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Edited 02/23/10 3:53 PM
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 3:55 PM - Response #2

Good points. How about something in the Admin area that we could monitor? We can see their last visit, of course, but not the number of visits.

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Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 4:09 PM - Response #3

I think it would be fine if Admins could see the number of visits. Many people choose to always stay logged in, so when they come back to the site they're technically not logging in again. But just the user activity alone could probably generate another official login. Maybe there would need to be some set time limit between activity sessions that would constitute a new login session. Let me ask Rick about this and see if he has some ideas here, and see if we can include this in Admin stats. Rick?


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Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 4:16 PM - Response #4

John,

Are you going to Statistics in our admin area of the menu bar, then to "List users and last login dates" right below the bar graph? You can also see these names and dates by going to Manage Classmates in the menu bar, click Enter/Edit Classmates, and look at the 7th column "Last Login."

Not sure this is what you are wanting, but I check ours all the time.

Anita

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Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 4:47 PM - Response #5

Thanks, Brad.

Here's another 'sample' from my lighthousekeepers.com website:

The 'clock' is always running but it reflects people who have visited in the last 24 hours. And the 'guests' are people who aren't logged in when they visit the home page. Each of the member names is hotlinked to their profile.

Collector Forums Recent Visitors: 393
Angels Gate, akmn, Lighthouse Loon, rgurskey, BruceG, AZlightkeeper, russ b, HCS, buddha, lvhrbrlts, Dave H, Bob M, Bruce and Judy, Markiff, Tom and Joyce Abbott, Freddie, Sunshine, silverfox51, seagirt, TerryO, bodielight01, SDudley, Moby Dick, TDSimpson, BGBaccaro, JTimothyA, Hal Dean, docsweetie, erniedee, flacoastie, wvlights0, Webmaster, WackoPaul, kory63, PFC, rscroope, JimQuinn, lmyhre, catzb1, Bill38429, JJ, DANIEL, LADYBUG, Cana Fan, CAVR, and 348 guest(s)

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Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 9:19 AM - Response #6

I guess what I'm confused on here is how is this different from what Anita mentioned above? You can already see last login dates in the admin area. So you already have the ability to see who has logged in during the past 24 hours. We're not specifically showing Guest logins there (i.e. people browsing the site who are not logged in), but we do keep track of all logins under the main Statistics page with a 24 hour cookie to keep visitor #'s as close to accurate as possible (click your Statistics link and read the information about the 24 hour cookie if anybody is unclear on what this is).

Anyway bottom line, what specifically should we be adding or doing differently than what we've already done showing last logins now?


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Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 10:44 PM - Response #7

Rick done did his thang on this. The data was there but now it's quicker/easier to see.


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Monday, March 1, 2010 at 10:20 AM - Response #8

Just saw this. Really Nice!

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Monday, March 1, 2010 at 11:20 AM - Response #9

Just did a double take at the change in scenery at the top of the Statistics Long in List. Thanks. I was tired of counting! LOL

Margaret

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Monday, March 1, 2010 at 11:38 AM - Response #10

Excellent solution - thanks for the fast turnaround!

A couple of far out suggestions:

1. After the count, show the percentage of registered members
[*] "111 members (60.6%) have been online in the last 30 days"

2. After each name in the "last 30 days", show how many times they were online in that period

What I'm trying to get to is the ability to identify frequent visitors (not just recent ones). Perhaps I can get some of these active people to help run the forums or provide content etc. or agree to work on the reunion committee, etc.

I'm happy, really, I am! Laughing

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Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 9:20 PM - Response #11

Rick? Smile


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Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 10:31 PM - Response #12

I'm afraid we can't show how many times a user was online.

A percentage would be easy enough, but I might not get to it for a few days.


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