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#Post#: 26163--------------------------------------------------
Who's Online Setup Issue
DIR By: Douglas Kucmerowski
Date: January 12, 2025, 9:21 am
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Create a Forum allows for a "daily" count that shows who's
online in a Forum, setup through admin functions on Forum Layout
page. To get that daily count you need to enter 1440 minutes in
the entry box, that is set to a 15 minute default. A recent
change now limits the User Online display to only ONE hour, 60
minutes. Why was this changed? Either change to definition to
User in the Past HOUR, or allow Forum Admins to change this time
base to whatever they chose.
This just happened
#Post#: 26164--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who's Online Setup Issue
DIR By: CreateAForum
Date: January 12, 2025, 9:35 am
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Unfortunately due to performance issuer, due to online bots, we
had to reduce the amount and no longer allow all day to be set.
#Post#: 26170--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who's Online Setup Issue
DIR By: Douglas Kucmerowski
Date: January 13, 2025, 7:18 am
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Please explain just a little bit more, as i can't seem to make
sense of how this DISPLAY setting would affect performance of a
given Forum.
This is a setup value for a time period and is purely for
"display" purposes, it only shows the number of members & guests
who visit a site in an admin adjustable time frame. It could be
hourly if set to 60, or a 15 minute window as the default is set
to, or an entire day, which is 1440 minutes. Since the
Description of that says its DAILY, the default should be 1440
(24 x 60 for those who are math challenged)
By setting this value NOTHING is changed that would affect
performance, only a display count for the number of times the
forum was visited, much like a webpage counter does. It DOES
create more admin pages to view if that count is higher, but for
the admin only.
How does a displayed value of Forum traffic affect performance
of that Forum?
Seems like that depends on how many users are hitting the
website.
What it does allow... it is offering the admin the capability to
see if their Forum is being attacked by "miscreants" like
Alibaba, and other "cloud" users who simply want to "add"
information to anyone's Forum to sell their products, or provide
a link to another webpage.
And our Forum was attacked 14743 times in one day by Alibaba,
until I blocked their IP range.
You are taking away a valuable tool for your Forum Admins, but
maybe that's because Create-a-Forum management prefers to let
advertisers run unchecked on their customers forums, gotta pay
the bills I guess. Sorry but the reply to this original question
seems like it makes zero sense, can you please expound on your
reply, and state exactly how "performance" is affected here?
Look at the image, do you see the issue with nomenclature?
Most "online today" is NOT correct with this 60 minute limit,
and now the ability to monitor for spam traffic is gone. If
Create-a-Forum believes that's a good thing I'm a little
suspect...
[attachimg=1]
#Post#: 26171--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who's Online Setup Issue
DIR By: CreateAForum
Date: January 13, 2025, 7:51 am
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That's not the case at all... I make right now on a given day
less than $10 a day from ads... This is more of a hobby for me
at this point and not really a growing business, as forums in
general are on a decline.
Performance is technical, when sites have it for 24 hours. It
stores all the users/guests in a database table, we have forums
that hit 200k people online plus in 24 hours and bots just make
it worse, that we have had outages and downtime recently which
have forced that change. And we have blocked millions of
ip's....
#Post#: 26172--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who's Online Setup Issue
DIR By: Douglas Kucmerowski
Date: January 13, 2025, 8:24 am
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Create-a-Forum in general is making money... wasn't talking
about individual forum admins that run a given Forum. I'm not
sure how anyone makes money on this tool, it's more for
collecting posts & the discussion of topics that interest a
certain group of people. In our case, a safety issue with the
Erie Canal
I can understand how having dozens of "extra pages" to display
user IPs, Time, and Forum page names might affect overall
performance but that information would still exist regardless of
whether it can be displayed, isn't that correct? If the
performance issue is a result of more data being held for
"possible" display & use, that's something to consider. Of
course that data is also being cleared away as fast as it's
being collected with every tick of the clock.
We found this was a tool to help weed out bots, and such. After
we blocked Alibaba for three days they gave up, same with
Russian IPs that were frequenting our Forum, and let's not
forget Amazon, Facebook, and other users who spent most of their
time reporting posts to moderators because they didn't like
content. We were able to BAN those IP ranges and eventually got
back to seeing users coming to the Forum for the content of the
material and topics e covered.
If taking away some Admin capability is the answer, then that's
it, story over... just seems like it's a move that's headed in
the wrong direction, unless people in charge want the bots to
win, by handcuffing admins who know how to deal with them.
Thank you for your reply & help.
#Post#: 26173--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who's Online Setup Issue
DIR By: CreateAForum
Date: January 13, 2025, 9:02 am
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No i mean createaforum itself makes less than $10 a day from
ads....the entire site and all forums....Costs more to run then
comes in.
#Post#: 26174--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who's Online Setup Issue
DIR By: Douglas Kucmerowski
Date: January 13, 2025, 9:55 am
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Wait, if that's true then CAF needs to change their model, it
seems like following the Federal Government business methodology
isn't working. It would make Create-a-Forum one of the few
"businesses" that currently operates under the "run at a loss"
business model, in a country that prides itself on Capitalism
first, Community & Social Responsibility are a distant second &
third.
I'll make some changes to hopefully add a few more pennies per
day to the coffers, if that helps. Again, thank you for
providing the information and for the work you do to make this
all happen on Create-a-Forum. Great support, very responsive,
take care.
#Post#: 26175--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who's Online Setup Issue
DIR By: CreateAForum
Date: January 13, 2025, 11:01 am
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Yes been that way for a while but this one of the first projects
I started after college almost 20 years so I keep it going.
I can possible add an exception for your site If you tell me the
forum url.
I have thought about going few different routes:
Paid only plans without ads.
Corporate/Business accounts
But those all require a lot of time and I run other businesses.
#Post#: 26176--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who's Online Setup Issue
DIR By: Douglas Kucmerowski
Date: January 13, 2025, 6:28 pm
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Sounds like you have too much on your plate, but most times it's
better to be busy than bored. One day you will leave it behind
to venture into your retired life, and from experience, will not
miss it as much as you thought you might. I'm 69, and figuring
out how to use tools like Create-a-Forum just now, never thought
I'd be involved in public causes or webpage management after a
career in private sector engineering.
If you decide to make this time factor exception, I would
actually code it in as a selectable "feature" in your Forum
setup library. And just as a thought, if the Forum User world is
shrinking I'd be asking why, and what can be done to reverse
that course. I think you will find that one reason is that Forum
setup is "challenging" at best, it was a bit much for two old
guys to figure out. We managed but what's needed is a "tool" to
assist your users... let's call it the Forum Wizard.
And that is a new product to this arena, so be sure to have a
"one-time" fee to use it... could be simple enough to do.
Basically it's just a way to collect information from the user,
to pre-load as much of setup requirements as possible, to get
them 80% on the way to a useful Forum. Best example I can direct
you to, Turbo Tax products do this very well, filling the blanks
of the US Federal Tax Forms.
If you get a chance, here's the Forum address -
HTML https://ecna.createaforum.com/index.php
#Post#: 26177--------------------------------------------------
Re: Who's Online Setup Issue
DIR By: CreateAForum
Date: January 13, 2025, 10:56 pm
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Done made the change you should be able to go over 60 for last
active again. I do like building things so don't think I can
ever really stop.
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