What is the best way to track online users in a PHP forum?

To track online users in a PHP forum, you can use session variables to store user information such as their username and last activity time. You can update this information every time a user interacts with the forum by setting a timestamp in the session variable. This way, you can easily track which users are currently online based on their last activity time. 

// Start or resume the session
session_start();

// Update user's last activity time
$_SESSION['last_activity'] = time();

// Check for online users
$online_users = [];
foreach ($_SESSION as $key => $value) {
    if ($key != 'last_activity') {
        if (time() - $value < 300) { // Consider a user online if their last activity was within the last 5 minutes
            $online_users[] = $key;
        }
    }
}

// Print online users
echo "Online users: " . implode(', ', $online_users);

Keywords

PHP online users tracking forum session management

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