Who's Online

...is that the list only updates when someone logs in.

Like I just logged in now and before it said that zine Alan guy and DJRick were logged in, then their names promptly disappeared.

Now, mine is the only one there.

It works the same way for post times, which I questioned weeks ago. For example, before I logged in it said you made this thread 6 hours ago, and when I logged in, it updated and said you made it 9 hours ago.

So, I'm assuming DJRick and that zine Alan guy were on 3 or 3 1/2 hours ago.

I think it's an attempt to make this place seem more active than it is or something, or there's a legit reason.

And NO I'm not being disrespectful, these forums have come a long way in the past few weeks. Just some observational critique.

And yes, I've seen myself as a logged in user after I've already logged out and then returned. I think it means no one had logged in since me.

in both cases, what you guys are seeing are one of two things:

1) your BROWSER cache file (a file stored on your computer that basically shows an old page instead of a new one so that it can pull up a page super fast--most of the time you see this when you hit the "back" button on your browser window. This happens with a lot of pages and you don't notice, but you notice it on this one because there's a discernible difference in state. You can hit a hard refresh and it should clear it up. (this is also why you're magically logged out sometimes--your browser is pulling up an old page in its cache that has you logged out--again, this is probably when you hit a back button back to the front page or what have you--instead of logging back in, hit your refresh button, and you'll probably pop back to the right page).

2) the SERVER'S cache file. For anonymous (non-logged in) users, the server stores a cache file (an old version of pages) so that it's not re-generating pages every time someone swings by the site. That's why you'll see a different list of people pop up, or a different number of guests online, when you log in--suddenly, you're seeing a live page, not the server's cache page.

Yeah? Yeah.

You can hit a hard refresh and it should clear it up

Actually, no, it doesn't. Not in the situation I described anyway.

Anyway, I also like the idea of being able to use the panel as an indicator of how much action I might expect at the site although as I said, for this purpose it is kind of unreliable. Just asking, really.