Website listing of "who's on"

[Liverdog]

How does the website know who's on at any particular time?

If I keep a webpage open, say on a forum post all day, but don't navigate away, where do the updates come from that tell the site and the other users that I'm still around?

Does the website time-out after a certain period of inactivity? If so, what is the time constraint?

 

[CapnRefsmmat]

vBulletin usually counts you as "online" when you've viewed a page on the site within the last 15 minutes. All it does is keep a record of the last page everybody viewed, and then it uses that to build the Who's Online page.

 

[NeFire242]

Yeah if you go to a user's profile it will tell you what page they're currently viewing.

If you wish you can choose not to show up in the list by changing your settings in the user control panel.