Who's online page dysfunction

Alphacarbon · Post by **Alphacarbon** » Fri Oct 23, 2015 12:27 pm

I parked a user on a thread page for a few minutes, and it still appeared as viewing "Index".

If it were an either or, I'd think it's something in the code that is shown to users but not to bots. But the fact that once in a while I'd a see a user as viewing the forum they're actually on, has been baffled.

AmigoJack · Post by **AmigoJack** » Fri Oct 23, 2015 12:40 pm

Provide us/me with an account so at least we/I can exclude the culprit of JS activity.

Post by **Brf** » Fri Oct 23, 2015 1:00 pm

Alphacarbon wrote:I parked a user on a thread page for a few minutes.

Viewing a page is not going to update the session. You would need to be clicking a link.

Alphacarbon · Post by **Alphacarbon** » Fri Oct 23, 2015 1:02 pm

AmigoJack wrote:Provide us/me with an account so at least we/I can exclude the culprit of JS activity.

Ok I'll make one soon and provide you with the details.

Alphacarbon · Post by **Alphacarbon** » Fri Oct 23, 2015 9:56 pm

Hello,

Here's a test login you can use:

Admin login removed, added to user notes

Hope you catch what's causing it.

RMcGirr83 · Post by **RMcGirr83** » Sat Oct 24, 2015 3:21 am

nevermind

Alphacarbon · Post by **Alphacarbon** » Sat Oct 24, 2015 10:22 pm

RMcGirr83 wrote:nevermind

Hmmmm OK.

Was anyone able to discern the problem?

AmigoJack · Post by **AmigoJack** » Sat Oct 24, 2015 11:59 pm

No. The account you provided was censored from your post, since it had adminstrative permissions. Create an account without administrative and moderator permissions.

Alphacarbon · Post by **Alphacarbon** » Sun Oct 25, 2015 2:37 am

Well isn't that amusing...

There were several test accounts floating around, and the one I got lazy and picked was apparently being used to test something privilege specific at some point. Serious thanks to the benevolent forces that be for swooping in and securing the matter.

That said, here's a freshly created user account (lesson learned):

TestDummy
phpbb123

Thank you once again.

AmigoJack · Post by **AmigoJack** » Sun Oct 25, 2015 10:45 am

Okay, there is no JS that makes users request the index. I browsed thru some forums and were displayed accordingly, both on the bottom in each forum, and on the viewonline page. So why are so many users displayed on the index?

You have many non-board pages, such as "Chat", "Blog", "Album", "Networks" - all those are unknown to the board and its viewonline page, hence it displays those as "Index" as well. I don't know to what extent each modification should also modify the viewonline page, so I cannot say if this is faulty behaviour or an expected one. I tend to say the latter one.
Have you also listed guests on viewonline? There are many of them, and in turn many of them are displayed being in one of your forums or reading a topic in one forum. Right now I see 102 guests, and just 3 members and just 3 bots. Thinking of a bug while only issuing this tiny fraction of users is not the best approach.
Guests are (or seem to be) able to access everything as well - why should I log in with my account when I'm able to read all parts of your board? Yes, I can't reply to anything, but you'd be surprised how many people are readers only without ever wanting to contribute anything.

All I can do is inspecting your /viewonline.php and /includes/session.php files (attach them). I could even make them also recognize your non-board pages (but that'd be a "quick hack" that hardcoded language in i.e. English.

Alphacarbon · Post by **Alphacarbon** » Tue Oct 27, 2015 11:54 pm

Thanks AJ for offering to take a look. I am attaching the files here.

It's fine if the Chat, Blog, etc pages just appear as Index. No need to hardcode them.
I'm just curious why users who are viewing forums aren't appearing as such.

AmigoJack · Post by **AmigoJack** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 7:40 am

/viewonline.php is identical to a 3.0.14 version - this also means none of your additional pages are recognized as such and chat, blog, album... all display as "on index". /includes/session.php is based on code older than 3.0.14 and modified as well both with comments (MOD start: Mobile/SEO style) and without. That makes it a mix of bugs being fixed by 3.0.14 and bugs being fixed by whoever distributed that file.

But everything seems to work as expected. I can only repeat: you have lots of guests (this time "In total there are 166 users online : 3 registered, 1 hidden and 162 guests") and they appear fine on reading a topic or browsing a forum.

Alphacarbon · Post by **Alphacarbon** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 10:16 am

Alright thanks AJ

I'm just going to let this one go. As someone suggested it's not that important of a feature. Hopefully an upgrade will bring the page back to how it used to function (before whatever was done to break it)