Who is *really* online? Fact or Fiction

While I was working on this new iJoomla.com site (version 1.5), I noticed that every time I logged in to the admin, the number of “online users” had grown. Only four people were working on the site — myself, the designer and a couple of programmers — but the number just seemed to keep getting bigger.

Last time I checked, 127 people were logged in!

The problem wasn’t that the four of us were handing out passwords like business cards at a convention. It was that Joomla logs online users time after time, and keeps them “logged in” for much longer than it used to. That’s great if you’re a user — on Joomla 1.0, you took a pee break and Joomla was kicking you out. But don’t count on this number because the number displayed both on admin and on the front end “who’s online” module is completely inaccurate.

Maybe we should change the module name from “Who’s online” to “Who’s ever been online multiplied by roughly the number of the times they were logged in.” Less sexy but more accurate.

I was curious, so I googled the subject and found that the official Joomla.org answer was “Check your server access log for the ‘real’ definitive answer as to who/how many are visiting your site.”

Yikes! Maybe someone can create a *real* “who’s online” module that shows what’s *really* happening on the site, rather than cached and outdated information.I wonder if this is the reason you won’t find this module anywhere on the Joomla.org website?

In the meantime, when you look at your “who’s online” module, take the number you see, divide it by the number days of the site has been online, divide it again by the estimated number of logged in members, add the number you first thought of and subtract the year of your birth. That should give you a good idea of the real number.

Tags: joomla 1.5, who's online