In the set-up instructions, it says to install it in an "empty database you have created for the Forum on the SQL Server."  The only problem is that our web host only gives us one (1) database, and we are already using it.  We have additional space in the database, and have a variety of tables for different things.

My question is this:  Can we install the forum database into the existing database without deleting the existing tables (assuming the existing tables have different names than the tables used by the forum)?

If we need an additional SQL Database just for the forum, I think it would be cheaper if we buy linux/unix webspace for phpBB or Invision Power Board forums, rather than pay for an additional SQL database.

I am more familiar with PHP Forums than ASP, but the rest of our site is in ASP and the server doesn't support PHP.

We are trying to save money by installing ASP forums on our existing ASP server.

So, does the install process nuke all the other tables in the database?

ljamal wrote: You can install the forum into a database with other tables as long as the there are no conflicts in the table and stored procedure names.

Is there a list somewhere that tells us what the tables and procedures are, or do I just need to read the code and hope I don't forget something!

ljamal wrote: There's a variable that you can set to append a prefix to the tables and another one that will append a prefix to the stored procedures when they are created. This will allow you to keep the tables from conflicting with other tables in your database. By default the variables are tbl and wwfsp.

I found it.  I had to change tbl to wwftbl so it wouldn't overwrite my existing tables.  It worked fine.  No lost of data.  Very very pleased.

The only place I goofed up was not changing it in BOTH common.asp files.  The comments in the code said to change it in common.asp also.  I didn't mention that there are two of them!

Well, I figured that out and it works fine.

Also, I am super pleased at how easy it was to integrate my existing asp site with the forum.  I simply modified the header and footer files, and suddenly the forum looks like the rest of my site.

I plan on doing much more integration, but right now I have other things on the burner.

One thing I would like to do is to have every page on my asp site detect visitors and logged in users.  Right now the forum does that when you are on the forum pages only.  I would like to add code to the rest of my asp site that would do the same.  Right now every asp page opens the same database as the forum is in, so adding more calls to the same database would be easy.

If someone has such a mod, that would be great.

The code for accessing the database is already included on every page, so all I would need is the actual code that tracks the users as active.  I don't even need to display anything (even though that would be a nice option).  I just want to count them as an active visitor to increase the count.

It looks much better to see 100 active users than 20.  Counting people on the whole site would increase the number dramatically even if they never come to the forum.  (The site we have is pretty big.)

The active users is done by a mixture of the main common.asp file and the file active_users_inc.asp.

common.asp loggs in the user and issues a logged in ID number (2 is issued to geusts) the the active_users_inc.asp file places the user in the active users table in the database. It also calls a few functions in the functions_common_fasp file that get the users OS and browser.

Hopefully this should help.

-boRg- wrote: The active users is done by a mixture of the main common.asp file and the file active_users_inc.asp.

Seems like a lot of code just to track users.

I guess I will have to spend time figuring out what was done, or get someone who knows asp to look at it.

I am an html coder who can cut and paste and modify existing asp, perl or javascript code.  I'm not proficient enough to write my own or even read complex asp, perl or javascript coding.  I just do the html.

When I looked at the code, I can see kinda what is going on, but am not sure what to cut and what to keep.  If I had more time, I'd probably be able to figure it out.  Just right now other things that are more important need to be updated on the site.

I just need the part that detects the user and adds the user to the active list.  Everything else can go.  Unless it necessary.  Which is where it gets confusing reading the code.  What IS actually needed for the process of detecting active users?

Also, I found an interesting bug/feature (depending how you look at it).  According to the forum, multiple users behind a firewall would be considered one active user.  Apparently it uses IP addresses to detect active users instead of cookies or session variables?  I was logged in as different usernames on two different computers with different operating systems with different browsers, and it still detected me as one active user.  If this is true, then if 100 people from AOL access your site at the same time, it will only show 1 active user.  That's not very accurate.  Plus, I would rather error on having an inflated number instead of a deflated number.  It looks bad when your active user count is low.  Even worse when it's not counting everyone.

-boRg- wrote: There is no acurate way of detecting users, session ID's and cookies are useless if people have cookies disabled so the best way is to use IP addresses, it's very rare that mutiple users will access your site at the same time with the same IP address and AOL users tend to change IP addresses every few minutes.

You actually have a very accurate way of tracking logged in users.  Since the server recognizes each logged in user, it should be easy to track who is active.  Unless, of course, you are not passing the login name with every page request.  In that case, passing that variable and counting who retreived a page within the last x minutes would provide a very accurate way of counting.

You would still have to resort to using IP addresses for guests, but you could use username to track logged in users instead of IP, which makes more sense and would be more accurate.

I think this is the method many other forums use to determine who is active on the forum.