How is the number of views calculated?

[vicki]

Hi Bob, just a small question...

I'm wondering how the number of views for each item in Showcase Home Page is calculated? Is it each view count coming from a unique username or ip or something else...?

 

[Bob]

Works the same as core XF. A "View" is recorded for each successful rendering of a thread/page/item/event etc. So in other words, if you went to a thread or showcase item and hit refresh 10 times, that is 10 views. There is nothing complex about it at all. It is in no way even close to being the same concept as Web Analytics.

 

[vicki]

Thanks Bob. I somehow can't get this logical view cnt in reality... so I just tried to go to item 'Rectangle Acrylic Aquarium 300 Gallons' on this site, and refreshed it 5 times - I didn't see the # of views change for the item. It simply stayed as 84 views for me...

 

[Bob]

Just like Core Xenforo, Views are not updated the exact second the page is accessed. Each "view" is logged and then at a set period of time, a CRON runs that updated the view counts for each item. Its done this way to cut down on the massive amounts of queries that would run to update each and every view as they happen.

The CRON for showcase view updates runs every hour at 30 minutes past the hour. You can change this to a different update interval by editing the CRON.

Admin CP >> Tools >> Cron Entries
Edit >> Showcase: Update Item Views
Change >> Run at minutes from 30 to what ever you want.

NOTE: if you want it to run every 15 minutes, you need to hold the CTRL key down and select 0, 15, 30, 45

 

[vicki]

Thanks Bob for the detailed explanation, again!