Who's Online Question

[dukesgrl]

Does anyone know why it takes so long for the "Who's Online?" to clear? What I mean is, I was out checking something in my store.....my admin showed I was online. Fine. I closed both pages and left my pc. When I came back about 20 minutes later, reopened my browser and went to Admin/tools/who's, it still showed I was online, in the store. I had alrady been gone 20 minutes. Can anyone explain this to me? Is it a cookie thing? If it is it stinks because I'm not really seeing how long someone is actually on my site....they could have left hours ago LOL!

 

thanks,

 

Dorinda

[kgt]

If it is it stinks because I'm not really seeing how long someone is actually on my site....they could have left hours ago LOL!

 

It's not a cookie thing, it's an HTTP thing. When you view a page, your browser requests the page from the webserver. When all data has been transferred, your browser and the webserver close their connection, and so don't know for sure if the other still exists. Who's Online can tell you the last time a user clicked on a link to view a page, but it cannot tell you for sure whether or not that person is still physically looking at the page, because the connection between them doesn't actually exist any more.

[dukesgrl]

It's not a cookie thing, it's an HTTP thing. When you view a page, your browser requests the page from the webserver. When all data has been transferred, your browser and the webserver close their connection, and so don't know for sure if the other still exists. Who's Online can tell you the last time a user clicked on a link to view a page, but it cannot tell you for sure whether or not that person is still physically looking at the page, because the connection between them doesn't actually exist any more.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. Now I understand.

 

Dorinda