"Online" Image

[Thesealion]

On this other forum i am on, which is not a ProBoards forum sadly , they don't even have a way to show that you are online or not...I was wondering if it would be possible to have people go to a website and get themselves an "online image." The image would somehow have a code attached to it where every time the "owner" of that image viewed the image it changed to an "online" picture. After 15 minutes where the image was not viewed again it would change back to "offline." Is that even possible?

[coolcoolcool]

A little more detail needed.

I don't completely understand what you mean. Maybe explain in detail how it would help and I might understand better.

What it sounds like atm is you want a separate website that the admin has to view to change an image to online and it only stays online for 15 minutes. Is that correct? If so it would require very basic php and mysql (or similar).

[Thesealion]

Nope not really. Basically what i want is a user to get an image. For the purpose of this explanation John gets www.image.jpg and put it in his sig. Whenever john's IP views www.image.jpg weather on the site it is hosted on or in his signature on the forum the image changes to one that says, "Online." Every time he views the image a timer is set for 15 minutes. After those 15 minutes the image reverts back to its normal "offline" image...

[RedBassett]

This is possible with backend coding, however IPs are a highly unreliable way to track people. To make the system effective, you would need to have a custom client or something.

[Thesealion]

How do you mean by a custom client?

[RedBassett]

Like a dynamic DNS client. Something that calls up the server hosting the image and tells it what IP is the one to watch for today. Just some way to update the IP if the user's IP rotates. Obviously this doesn't take into account logging in from other locations.

New idea:

Put a login script on the image. Image won't turn to online until user logs in. When tracking sessions, use the user's IP to logout if the IP changes. That way, each time they log in you can track the IP of the login and use that to watch for online activity.

[Thesealion]

I know almost nothing about all this coding so this would be a huge project for me that i'd probably never finish....anyway basically what i'm trying to say is i might not exactly understand how everythiny you say would work

Ok so put a login script in the image. Is it possible to take an image and somehow have a script inside it? Or would the person have to visit another site than the forum we're on before his online image would work?

[RedBassett]

I am an idiot. Cookies are another method of achieving this.

As for how to do it, it takes a bit of back-end knowledge, most likely in something like PHP.

The login would have to be on a different page.

I'm just listing off ideas here.

[Thesealion]

That's cool I'm sorta understanding what you're talking about. So what we'd do is create a cookie that the image remembered whenever the computer saw the image? Then what would that cookie do?

[RedBassett]

Essentially, yes. You can embed things like cookies into images via a backend script. Each time the cookie shows, set the last seen time to the current time, and when the image is loaded by someone without that cookie, check the last time the cookie was seen and decided whether to show online or offline.

[Thesealion]

Ok...now i just have to go learn PHP and stuff to actually figure out how to do it

[RedBassett]

Yeah, unfortunately PHP or an equivalent language is needed to make such an image.

[Thesealion]

I sorta knew that when i got started...This was a way to get me back into coding the question is where do i start learning enough to learn how to do this

[coolcoolcool]

Best way to learn to program is to program imo.

If you really want to do something, dive in head first. If you have no knowledge of php/mysql, maybe start with a introductory tutorial. Then, anything else you need to know just google it. It's kind of funny how half the stuff I do I start having no idea what I'm doing. Break down the problem and figure out the parts by themselves.

[RedBassett]

Jul 24, 2012 17:11:26 GMT -8 coolcoolcool said:

Best way to learn to program is to program imo.

If you really want to do something, dive in head first. If you have no knowledge of php/mysql, maybe start with a introductory tutorial. Then, anything else you need to know just google it. It's kind of funny how half the stuff I do I start having no idea what I'm doing. Break down the problem and figure out the parts by themselves.

This. Get a comfortable understanding of the language, and then just try new things in little steps towards the goal of that final project.