Detect online users?

Question

I\'m not sure what would be the easiest way to do this. I need to be able to detect what users are online on my website. So when people are viewing a thread or something it

Answer 1

• have a MySQL database with a user table
• have a column in that user table which saves the "last seen"-time
• update that column on every page request
• when checking for online or offline, check if current time minus "last seen"-time is greater than some treshold you like

Edit: You could optionally make a javascript "ping" the server (request an empty page) every two minutes or so if you want people idling with your Website open to be displayed as online, too.