Track Member Activity?

[jzewatsky]

Is there a way, included in vB or hacked, to keep track of a users activity while on your site?

Here is my issue, My users log in, but very few of them ever post anything. I really dont know what their doing when they do log in. I dont know if it's the site's content that causes the lack of posting, or the site design. I think if I could see what a user was up to (what they clicked, how long they stayed there, etc) I might be able to make the site better.

Does anyone know of a way to do this? Do you feel it is an invasion of privacy?

[Robert]

Well, there are a number of stats hacks that are very useful (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=68876). This one lets you know who viewed a particular thread.

But getting people to post is a difficult thing to do. Like most things in life once people have done it once or twice it is not so much of a hard task any more. Often it is just a case of them waiting for the right topic to come up.

I have 385 members but only but less than 35% have actually posted anything and only about 10% of the total forums numbers post enough to be called contributors,

[DarkWarriorXII]

A simple way to see what users are currently doing is to use the Who's Online feature. (forumurl/online.php). As I said, that just tells you what they're currently doing, no history.

[jzewatsky]

Well I think I found part of the problem this evening. Apparently, my forum permissions got way out of wack. My admin permissions were ok of course, but most of my users could only see one forum... and it was a poll forum, and they were not allowed to vote on the polls. So really they could not do anything. Unfortunately, my users did not know any better and thought that was what the site consisted of.

:o:mad::confused: I guess I'll learn from it!!!!

I've fixed the permissions and have had more activity in the past few hours than I ever had. (sent out an email telling users of error and correction).

Leads to another question, is there a good way to keep track of permissions. I didnt realize, that there were usergroup permissions and forum permissions. The edit permissions pages looks identical in the Admin CP so I figured that they were the same thing. (Second guessing myself now, are they different permissions?)

Thanks for your feedback, comments, and help!!

[Isis]

I must admit, vBulletin's forum and usergroup permissions system is complex and when you've got a large-ish forum it's easy to make a mistake. Setting up permissions is one of the things I really hate. It would be handy if in future versions, admins would see little notes or something similar by each forum so that we know who has access to the forum and at what level, a bit like with the webtemplates hack where you can see which usergroups can view that particular page and which usergroups can't at the bottom of the actual page - it's so handy.

[jzewatsky]

Snow,

Are you saying that the Webtemplates hack allows you to see which usergroup has permission to view a forum from within the forum? It would be great if it did.

[Isis]

It shows me permissions of that particular page (which is made with the webtemplates hack). I've attached a screenshot so that you can see what I mean.