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By problue solutions on
I have noticed one username on my site is accessing my main page RSS feed about every 30mins, obviously this is being done automatically. If a user adds my feed into an RSS reader, or adds it to an aggregator on their own site, why would they be showing online or actually accessing the site under their drupal username to do so? I have several other users who subscribe to my feed but they dont access the site to do so, and they dont show as online every 30mins. Is this normal?
Comments
This is due to session
This is due to session handling of drupal If you noticed drupal keeps your session open very long. Say you opened session in the morning and left when you come back at night you will see your session is still open. And your users may use Firefox (or another browser) for reading RSS feeds. Since requests made from same browser for every 30 min your users will look online even if they didn't visited your site. To get rid of this problem you may try Automated Logout (http://drupal.org/project/autologout) module, with this module you can close sessions in 10 minute inactivity and can overcome that problem.
ahh, yes I understand how
ahh, yes I understand how sessions work with drupal and I have no problem with sessions remaining open as its very convenient for users, I just hadnt considered that if a user is using firefox for example to subscribe to the RSS feed, that a browser access would register each time the feed is read, considering they arent actually using the browser. Whatever way firefox etc gets the feed shouldnt really result in the user returning to the session and thus showing as being online on my site. hmmmm.
Problue Solutions
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you can also shorten session lifetime in settings.php
a user will remain as "online" until the session is killed in the sessions table of the database whether the browser is open or not. Users can also show multiple times as online if they open more than one browser window or use more than one browser to browse a site.
What I mean by showing online
What I mean by showing online is that the user is listed in the "who's online" block, which is set to 15mins. If I dont visit my site for say 3 hours, I will not show up in the "who's online" block, but my session will remain open, as when I return to the site I am not required to login. So a user will not show up in the "who's online" block just because their session is still open.
Problue Solutions
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I believe visiting your feed is the same as visiting your site. The domain is being hit to get the feed whether through a browser or a reader. I don't use the who's online block though, so I could be incorrect.
yeah accessing the RSS feed
yeah accessing the RSS feed directly is still accessing the site, but as its obvioulsy via a reader or aggregator then why is the actual drupal username registering an access each time? An automated reader or aggregator will be operating on a server and not a local machine, the user wont be leaving their machine on all night accessing my site every 30mins. Just seems a bit strange as I know of a few other uses who have my RSS feed in readers and it doesnt cause this behavior.
Problue Solutions