Online users fluctuating every few minutes wildly...

[ubbuser]

Hi why is it that at one time the online users # is say, 110. Then a few minutes later it's 25 !

I think the "Guests" are not cookied/tracked properly ... something is misleading somewhere

I have seen heavy vB sites where the number remain steady (online) if majority of the current users online are logged in members, compared to guests online (non-registered, not logged in users).

That's just been my observation so any explanation would be helpful.

Thx!

[Joe Gronlund]

is your cookies settings in admin CP set to / ??

[ubbuser]

I don't know what you mean by "/" but timeout is 900 as it was default. Nothing else.

[Joe Gronlund]

Path to save cookies setting, not sure thats your problem but be sure its set to /

[ubbuser]

Path to save cookies where is that setting in ? I never recalled seeing it or setting it.

[ubbuser]

Sorry I just checked and it's set to /

So that setting is right.

However one thing I leftblank is:

Cookie Domain
The domain on which you want the cookie to have effect. If you want this to affect all of yourhost.com rather than just forums.yourhost.com, enter .yourhost.com here (note the 2 dots!!!). Can be left blank.


I don't have a forums.yourhost.com going, can I try placing ".yourhost.com" and try?

[ubbuser]

Naah that didn't work either.

Something's either messed up at my end (my ISP perhaps?), my browser (prob shows up with ns 6.x and Ie 6.x, both), or the cookie setup is not correct.

I have seen numbers drop from 110 to 29 in a couple of minutes! The change is usually in the # of guests, while # of logged in members are fine, always.

My forums are setup as:

https://www.domainname.com/forums

typical setup so what's wrong

[ubbuser]

Anyone have a suggestion? Apache settings maybe?

[TheHideoutGuy]

You did check IP's right?

I had a similar this happen although not to that extent. I went from 3 to about 48 users in a couple seconds. The who's online display did in fact show unique IP's so they must have been legit.

[ubbuser]

Hy thehideoutguy... just digressing a bit from the main topic, but I noticed you are selling (or re-selling?) digichat. Why the flux is this chat product so expensive?

[TheHideoutGuy]

Cause it's better!!

Warning: Off Topic!

Digichat is IMHO by far the best chat available. It's pretty to look at, easy to use, and powerful at the same time. The first two qualities is what your users will appreciate! I'm a reseller for them, so I can't exactly be considered unbiased, but I started out as a customer some time ago.

It really isn't that expensive compared to the alternatives. Take Volano, an extremely popular chat room program as an example.. For a 50 user Volano server you'll pay $595, while for a comparable 100 user DC server you'll spend $495.. It's cheaper and prettier than Volano IMHO too! 100 concurrent chatters is quite a bit, it should serve just about any single site just fine.

Check out my chat room, I don't really plug it much though as my site is still very much under development. (It's more of a hobby for me than anything). I actually purchased it for my family who meets online once every week or so for family chat night.