Who's Online Auto Refresh

Who's Online Auto Refresh

Auto-refreshing "Who's Online" widget for Invision Community 5.

The list of online users updates automatically, without requiring a page reload.

The standard "Who's Online" widget displays users as they appeared when the page was loaded and is cached by Invision Community for 15 minutes. Consequently, visitors see an outdated list unless they manually refresh the page. "Who's Online Auto Refresh" solves this: the widget remains the standard one, but the data within it updates on the fly. This makes the forum feel active and clearly shows that people are present.

Key features:

• Automatic updates via AJAX. New members appear in the widget and those who leave disappear—all without needing to reload the page.

• Adjustable interval from 1 to 60 minutes.

• Fresh data, bypassing the cache. The application requests an up-to-date list from the server, rather than using the widget’s 15-minute cached version. The underlying logic remains unchanged: it still checks for access to the "Online" section, accounts for anonymous participants, maintains the specified list order, and adheres to the 60-name limit for the vertical widget.

• A standard widget, unchanged. Its appearance and functionality remain the same. Only the content is swapped in, while user profile cards (displayed on hover) and tooltips continue to work as expected.

• Selecting groups. You can enable auto-update for everyone, only for selected groups, or add guests.

• Resource conservation. While a browser tab is inactive, no requests are sent. When a visitor returns, the list is updated immediately if the data is older than the specified interval. On pages without the widget, the script performs no actions.

• A fallback mechanism: if a request to the application fails, the script retrieves the widget directly from the page itself, ensuring the site loses nothing.

• Installation without modifying the kernel. IC files remain untouched; everything is integrated via standard extensions.

Requirements:

• Invision Community 5.0.x, PHP 8.1 or higher.

• The standard "Who's Online" widget should be placed in the IC (either in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page).

• Installation from the ACP: System → Applications → Install.

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