| re: Tracking user activity in PHP
>My client is using the UBB Threads forum and I was recently asked to[color=blue]
>look into adding the ability to track the activity of each of the users
>to see who is more active than others. Users are identified by a
>cookie.[/color]
Take the value from $_COOKIE['userid'] and use it to increment a
counter in a database for the user. Or log the user id, page,
timestamp and IP address in a database. It depends on how much
detail you need.
[color=blue]
>Now can this be done at the server level somehow?[/color]
Yes.
[color=blue]
>Or would it be easier
>to include a tracking function in each page that records a per user hit
>count?[/color]
The counting would have to be done on each page, or in common
code included from each page. I believe Apache has a capability
of specifying a header file for each PHP page in a directory so
you could use that without editing existing pages.
Client-side tracking is difficult because Javascript is Turned
Off(tm), a single user does not necessarily mean a single computer
with a single browser, and the data, being stored on the client,
isn't as accessible when you need it.
[color=blue]
>Obviously I don't want to give the server more work to do than is
>necessary.[/color]
Gordon L. Burditt
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