What are the best practices for displaying real-time user online status in PHP forums or websites?

One of the best practices for displaying real-time user online status in PHP forums or websites is to use AJAX to periodically update the user's status without refreshing the entire page. This can be achieved by sending asynchronous requests to the server to check the user's status and update the UI accordingly. 

// PHP code snippet for updating user online status using AJAX

// Include the necessary PHP files and initialize the session
session_start();

// Check if the user is logged in
if(isset($_SESSION['user_id'])){
    // Update the user's online status in the database
    // Code to update user's online status in the database goes here
}

// Return the updated user's online status
echo json_encode(array('status' => 'online'));

Keywords

real-time user online status PHP forums websites display

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