Invision Community 4: SEO, prepare for v5 and dormant account notifications By Matt Monday at 02:04 PM
Pavel Chernitsky Posted December 22, 2020 Posted December 22, 2020 In the statistics section of the ACP, there are all sorts of stats. Some more useful and some less so. However, there is the "Online Users" stat, that in my opinion (when cross-referenced with other stats) is one of the more important ones to know how your community is doing. Sadly, while more of the statistics can be viewed by multiple time divisions (I just realized I don't know the English word for that, if there is one) like day, week month etc. But the Online users stats can only be shown by what I gather to be 15min chunks. That's kind of ridiculous/pointless, and if I can hazard a guess, kinda lazy, since I'm guessing it just counts sessions and vomits them to this graph. I tried exporting the CSV file and combining the data in Excel to be shown by day, but that obviously doesn't work since the data in just being added so if you have someone who was online for 45 minutes, they'd be counted twice. Is there any built in way or workaround to show the data by a longer period of time? Here is the "Online Users" stat from our community, shown - the only way it can be - by 15mins. Very important stat, shown in a very pointless manner. and the "registrations", shown by a much more manageable weekly summary:
bfarber Posted December 22, 2020 Posted December 22, 2020 We take snapshots of the total number of online users every X minutes - we do not track which users are online, so you cannot see how long individual sessions last I'm afraid.
Pavel Chernitsky Posted December 22, 2020 Author Posted December 22, 2020 I'm not looking to see how long sessions last, only how many people we had online in a given time (day/week/month/year). moreover, if the system does work the way you're describing, it's even more problematic and unreliable. It can easily miss people who log in after you take one screenshot and log out before you take the second one. If you want to show a true to life image of the traffic on communities, a different approach should be taken. I don't much about those things, but maybe using the cookie files (maybe writing entrance & exit times and filtering using that data) would work properly.
bfarber Posted December 23, 2020 Posted December 23, 2020 Indeed if someone logs in and out in the 15 minute snapshot window, they won't be included in the snapshot. The reality is, this is not a realtime moving chart - it's just a snapshot taken every 15 minutes which is entirely suitable for most administrator's purposes in tracking online user counts. If you need something more detailed or accurate, you may wish to use something like Google Analytics (which our charts are not intended to replicate or replace).
Pavel Chernitsky Posted December 24, 2020 Author Posted December 24, 2020 (edited) 20 hours ago, bfarber said: If you need something more detailed or accurate, you may wish to use something like Google Analytics (which our charts are not intended to replicate or replace). We of course use Google analytics, but I really liked how that single piece of info in available from within the ACP and visible every time I go there. Also, Google can't show members vs guests, which I think is one of those pieces of info that once you know - you always NEED to know 🙂 Edit: forgot to say that Google analytics is also "helped" by the fact it's as easy and fun to use as a breaking wheel. Edited December 24, 2020 by Pavel Chernitsky
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