What are the challenges in creating an online counter in PHP that accurately tracks the number of users online and total visitors?

One challenge in creating an online counter in PHP is accurately distinguishing between online users and total visitors. To solve this, you can use sessions to track individual user activity and store the total visitor count in a separate variable. 

// Start the session
session_start();

// Increment the total visitor count
if(!isset($_SESSION['total_visitors'])) {
    $_SESSION['total_visitors'] = 1;
} else {
    $_SESSION['total_visitors']++;
}

// Check if the user is already counted as online
if(!isset($_SESSION['is_online'])) {
    $_SESSION['is_online'] = true;
}

// Display the online users and total visitors count
echo "Online Users: " . count($_SESSION) . "<br>";
echo "Total Visitors: " . $_SESSION['total_visitors'];

Keywords

PHP online counter tracking visitors challenges

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