We recently turned the "online now" feature on, and most of us like it. However, we've noticed a couple anomalies that have us puzzled and wonder if anyone can help us understand what's going on.

1. Today I noticed "2 members and x guests" but on ly saw my own login listed as a member. When I clicked the Admin View, I saw one of our regulars listed as "Hidden". How does a user set himself to (or become) "hidden"? Is there a way to block this?
   
2. Last night I had a similar occurrence, but inst ead of the person's name not appearing at all, I saw a hyperlinked comma before my username. When I checked Admin View, I saw another longtime user listed, but found out that his e-mail address was unverified. He MIGHT have changed his e-mail address re cently or his profile. I don't know why all of a sudden this would appear in his record. I also don't know why this would block his username from appearing, replacing it with a comma.
   
3. A couple weeks ago, I saw one member listed as "null". I checked this one and found a similar error--" e-mail address unverified". Does the sw replace unverified users' names with "null" if their accounts have been, for some reason, inactivated (or never were fully activated)?

Portland in the National League.

I can't wait to hear the answers on these

Interesting questions! I actually am not sure of the answers, but I'm going to try to find someone around here who does!

FYI to those that may be curious, this is for an OpenTopic board.

Hi Matt,

quote:

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+ Today I noticed "2 members and x guests" but on ly saw my own login listed as a member. When I clicked the Admin View, I saw one of our regulars listed as "Hidden". How does a user set himself to (or become) "hidden"? Is there a way to block this?

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Users can set their visibility preference from the preferences tab on the MyPop page. You can control whether or not users can hide themselves from the Online Now section of the all site-wide settings page. The option is called "Users Can Hide Themselves."

quote:

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+ Last night I had a similar occurrence, but inst ead of the person's name not appearing at all, I saw a hyperlinked comma before my username. When I checked Admin View, I saw another longtime user listed, but found out that his e-mail address was unverified. He MIGHT have changed his e-mail address re cently or his profile. I don't know why all of a sudden this would appear in his record. I also don't know why this would block his username from appearing, replacing it with a comma.
+ A couple weeks ago, I saw one member listed as "null". I checked this one and found a similar error--" e-mail address unverified". Does the sw replace unverified users' names with "null" if their accounts have been, for some reason, inactivated (or never were fully activated)?

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These bugs with the online now display oddities should be fixed with the next release. Jonmark has spent quite a bit of time in there fixing things up (and these two problems in particular).

Regards,

Brian Lenz
Infopop Corporation

Thanks, Brian. I wasn't sure whether I had done (or failed to do) something. I will let members lurk. "Outing" folks was one of my concerns when we debated implementing this feature.

natalia: FYI to those that may be curious, this is for an OpenTopic board.

Sorry. I complain about my users posting to the wrong forum, but I'm still unsure of all the categories here. Feel free to move it.

Portland in the National League.

If you click on a guest listed in the online now table, it'll bring up a new user form, just as if you had clicked on an existing user. For an existing user, you can edit his profile, etc.. But what can you do with the new user who is a guest?

If I assign a guest (tracked by IP and/or cookie, presumably) a username or some other identifier, will that appear next time he views the site as a guest? ?

Portland in the National League.

Hi Matt,

I suspect you are referring to the admin view of the Online Now list. In the public online now list, guests are simply numbered and not listed in any other way. Only regular users will show up with a name and a link to their profile.

On the admin online now list, there should not be a link to create a new user for those guests listed. I'll make the change to the page so that it will not link to a new member profile page.

Thanks for bringing this up!

Regards,

Brian Lenz
Infopop Corporation