Spiders

[JBR]

Looking at the bottom of the page, I see that we have 23 guests, 2 users (5 spiders) with us today.

My first reaction was to ask what is the difference between 'users' and 'spiders'.
To be honest, 'users' appear to be more welcome than 'spiders', which sound a bit scary.

What is the difference?  (Just out of interest, of course, as I am a fully paid-up (though free) guest.)

[klondike]

Users are people logged in. Most of the guests are potential spammers (still getting big numbers of signups rejected by a mod I installed that blocks known spammers) and the spiders are things like googlebot that indexes the site.

[JBR]

Users are people logged in. Most of the guests are potential spammers (still getting big numbers of signups rejected by a mod I installed that blocks known spammers) and the spiders are things like googlebot that indexes the site.

That's interesting.  I wasn't aware of those particular terms.  So on this occasion there have been 23 guests and I assume that they have been reading our posts but they are not permitted to post.
Spiders sound as if they are nothing more than an unavoidable irritation.
Presumably, guests may later appear as users if they are accepted.

[klondike]

Most of those guests aren't people at all they are just scripts running on servers which have been coded to attempt to sign up for forums.

Sometimes they weren't recognised by the mod as sources of spam and succeed in registering an account. Most of those accounts just sit dormant. I expect they are eventually used by other scripts to actually post spam but it seems to take a while. I deleted a couple the other day that were weeks old but hadn't been noticed - mostly because I rarely log in using the admin account.

[muddy]

How do you know who's online ? 

[klondike]

If I understood what you were asking...

The server retrieves the cookie it has stored on your PC every time your browser sends it a request and amongst other things the cookie identifies you. It records the activity along with the time so can display all users that have made any request on its services in the last 15 ( or whatever) minutes. It has no means of telling whether you are still reading the last page it sent to you - it only knows what and when your last request was.

If you meant how does it identify spammers then it has access to lists of email addresses, user ids and ip addresses that have been reported as sources of spam. Essentially it relies on webmasters reporting that information from misbehaviour on their servers.

[muddy]

I meant if there is somewhere that says xyz are on line now ? 

[Alex]

I hesitated opening this thread !   

[klondike]

I meant if there is somewhere that says xyz are on line now ?

Just who has been active on the forum during the last 15 minutes. Many including me just set the login to last forever and never sign out so knowing I was logged in means nothing.