Trouble with who is online?

[d-wiz]

I'm having trouble with the "who is online" it only shows other members for a few secends then I appear to be alone even if I know there are users logged in and online?

[Andy Huang]

Few possibilities:
1) They logged off shortly after, this makes them disappear from members, and appear only in the count for guests. Let your members know that they can stay logged in by checking the "Remember me" check box, and so they don't need to always login each time they go to your site.
2) Your session time out may be set incorrectly short. Check Admin CP > vBulletin Options > Cookies and HTTP Header Options > Session Timeout, and make sure it is a reasonable time frame.
3) Your web server software (IE: Apache) is constantly crashing, and losing all old session informations. You will need to contact your hosting provider / server admin to see about resolving this one.

[d-wiz]

It was the session timeout.

I'm still a bit confused as to the value to put here. I was thinking 24 hours as I hate it myself when sites just lock out and the forum also is used as a hangout. But then there is a lot of users online that havn't been there for hours?

Any recomnended settings?

[Steve Machol]

The default is 900 (15 minutes.)

[Andy Huang]

The session time out does not affect you if you check off the remember me check box; which is very useful for sites you regularly visit -- though, your browser must support cookies for that.