Forum Stats Widget (with online users too)

vimo

Looks nice.

Is there a possibility to see online guests. (no members) You see it a lot on other forums.

CyberGene

Thanks for the suggestions! I’ve reached the weekly limit of my Claude Pro account but man, I’ve managed to develop three extensions already with just a €18 a month subscription. Cool times we live in! 🙂 I agree that it might actually be better to have a similar layout on desktop as on mobile. I will certainly try something once my Claude Code limits reset in the weekend.

krvam

Thanks, its very good
i will install it

Capybara

Thanks! Everything works

Wlork

CyberGene I agree that it might actually be better to have a similar layout on desktop as on mobile. I will certainly try something once my Claude Code limits reset in the weekend.

Thank you very much 🙂

Question : Do Pusher and/or Realtime work with this widget ? At least, for online user ?

An another suggestion : It wouldn't make more sense to choose what to display in settings rather than via permissions ? Or both? Because administrators don't necessarily want to see all the stats.... 🙂

Capybara Thanks! Everything works

Yes, it work very well 🙂 Good work again @CyberGene

dragsugur

nice job! i really liked your pop-up idea!
can you share your thoughts on the performance? Capybara
i was trying to make something similar for my forum

Capybara

dragsugur I haven't noticed any performance issues so far, but it’s still early 👀

Wlork

@CyberGene

Sorry for my amateur work, but here’s a quick idea :

Of course, it would be nice to be able to adjust the length (via settings), but this way, the widget doesn’t take up too much space.

Why not let users pin the widget to the header (via settings) so it scrolls with the page ? 🙂

I’m curious to see what you’ll do 🙂

CyberGene

vimo Is there a possibility to see online guests. (no members) You see it a lot on other forums.

There is an extension for 1.x that does that and I've been using it on my Prod forum, however I started having some doubts about whether it works correctly at all. I need to see its code first.

Wlork Question : Do Pusher and/or Realtime work with this widget ? At least, for online user ?

I researched the possibility of this being somehow hooked to Realtime but it seemed like quite a hassle, at least that's what Claude Code said, would be too complicated to implement. BTW, according to Claude Code, online users will be really hard to integrate with Pusher/Realtime because they weren't meant to. Maybe someone on the Flarum team can share his opinion, because I'm trusting Claude Code almost entirely. As I've said many times, I'm a senior software engineer but with very different background (Java backend engineer) and I know nothing about Laravel, JS, etc. and my PHP is very rudimentary. That being said, it was actually me who proposed to Sycho the two-tiered cache in the online widget and he implemented in his later versions 🙂

Wlork It wouldn't make more sense to choose what to display in settings rather than via permissions ? Or both?

Yeah, I also thought about introducing enable/disable toggles for everything, currently it's only for the online users.

As to making the desktop look similar to the mobile view, that's something I would like to. Funnily enough, it's the desktop layout that I designed myself and then asked Claude Code to port it to the mobile view and as you can see, it's not the same but turned out surprisingly good! I will have to ask Claude Code to port it back to desktop too 😃 I guess I may have more time tomorrow for these tests and experiments since my weekly usage quota will reset tomorrow.

iorGian

It's ok to install on dark styles ?

CyberGene

iorGian it will follow the forum style, so yes.

Wlork

CyberGene I researched the possibility of this being somehow hooked to Realtime but it seemed like quite a hassle, at least that's what Claude Code said, would be too complicated to implement.

Okay, thanks for explaining. If you can't do it or if it's too complicated, don't worry about it 🙂

CyberGene Yeah, I also thought about introducing enable/disable toggles for everything, currently it's only for the online users.

Yes, I think that would be simpler.

Because I've seen few issues:

You can't see other users who are online when you click “N+ more.” Nothing happens when you click it ?
Even if you limit the number of online users displayed, administrators can still see everything. There's no “N+” line.

CyberGene As to making the desktop look similar to the mobile view, that's something I would like to. Funnily enough, it's the desktop layout that I designed myself and then asked Claude Code to port it to the mobile view and as you can see, it's not the same but turned out surprisingly good! I will have to ask Claude Code to port it back to desktop too 😃 I guess I may have more time tomorrow for these tests and experiments since my weekly usage quota will reset tomorrow.

I'm curious to see the result !

Just so you know, I've translated your extension 🙂

CyberGene

Wlork You can't see other users who are online when you click “N+ more.” Nothing happens when you click it ?

That's actually intentional. It's the original behavior of the online users widget and the simple explanation is the cache would take a lot of memory. Here's the detailed explanation:

It all starts with the fact you can't just fetch the current online users on every widget load because that would mean any user loading the widget will execute a relatively heavy SQL query that will slow down the forum
Due to the above reason a cache was introduced, so that the online users are fetched once every 30 seconds (configurable) and then directly served to users loading the forum from the cache
Using a single cache turned out to be wrong though, because some users might be given the permission to see the online status of all users, regardless of whether they hide their online status (usually admin/mods would be given that privilege) and if it happens that such a privileged user is the one triggering the cache refresh, then non-privileged users would see all online users. That's an actual side effect with the online user widget I discovered in the past and is why I offered to Sycho to maintain two caches: one for privileged users and one for non-privileged users
Now, if you have a huge forum with many online users, keeping them in two separate caches in the server memory is not very good idea.

Hence, we limit the number of users that are listed in the dropdown to e.g. 15, sorted by the most recent first, whereas the rest is just presented as a number.

That being said, I actually tested a version where you can click on the number, so that the rest is loaded on demand by the widget and shown. But it started getting complicated and I was out of tokens, which is why I decided to abandon it in order to no introduce any bugs. Currently there are two separate settings for the max number of online users to see, one for the non-privileged user (default: 15) and one for the privileged users (default: 40). On my small forum we're rarely more than 10 users online but in any case I would recommend to keep those numbers low because they have the potential to affect the memory usage. I can still implement the functionality to expand the "+N more" circle by performing an explicit SQL query and just serve all the online users directly, bypassing the cache, but I think this should better be a functionality for admin/mods only because it could potentially be a heavy SQL query.

And BTW, I implemented the requested new layout where the widget is shown above the discussion list:

I just need to test it a bit more before releasing it. And I've kept the original layout with the widget in the sidebar too, so in the settings you can switch between both. Also implemented are toggles for each category.

Wlork

CyberGene Here's the detailed explanation:

Thank you for explanations. This explains why this extension slows down the forum in version 1.0. All users are displayed, there is no limit.

CyberGene And BTW, I implemented the requested new layout where the widget is shown above the discussion list:

Not bad ! 🙂

We will can adjust the length ? Because if the administrator decides to display only one or two stats, there’s going to be a lot of empty space.... How will the widget look in that case ? 🙂

CyberGene

Wlork Not bad ! 🙂

We will can adjust the length ? Because if the administrator decides to display only one or two stats, there’s going to be a lot of empty space.... How will the widget look in that case ? 🙂

I've been experimenting with various positions, even showing this inside the toolbar (between the "all discussions" button and the other two buttons on the right) and as a result Claude Code messed up everything and then I hit the quota limit and will have to wait for a few more hours 🤦🏻‍♂️ I'm considering either switching to Max but it's a bit too expensive at €128 a month, or rather pause a little and finish this extension at small steps 🙂

Wlork

CyberGene

Once again, sorry for my amateur work.

Widget in the middle, between these buttons.
Don't extend it across the entire width to avoid empty spaces, depending on the administrator's preferences.
Compatible with tablet format

Here is another suggestion, if that is possible, of course 🙂

KBExit

Wlork I don't think the widget in the middle would help as it would also shift it in the middle for the mobile view.
This would be a huge constraint with big communities with higher stats as there's not enough real estate for such information.

Wlork

KBExit I don't think the widget in the middle would help as it would also shift it in the middle for the mobile view.

It's just for tablet/PC 😉

KBExit This would be a huge constraint with big communities with higher stats as there's not enough real estate for such information.

My photo is just a ugly draft 😅

It should be smaller. And there’s a way to make it even smaller.

Use only numbers.... And write “23K” instead of “23,000.”.... for example 🙂

CyberGene

v1.1.1 — Configurable Layout, Desktop/Mobile Bar Positions, Stat Toggles & Accessibility

Big update with a bunch of new features since v1.0.1:

Configurable Layout

Choose between the classic sidebar widget or a new full-width bar above the discussion list. Full-width mode supports three desktop positions — above, inside, or below the toolbar. The default is now full-width inside the toolbar.

Desktop — Inside toolbar (collapsed)	Desktop — Inside toolbar (expanded)

Desktop — Above toolbar	Desktop — Below toolbar

The classic sidebar layout is still available:

Desktop — Classic sidebar (collapsed)	Desktop — Classic sidebar (expanded)

Separate Desktop & Mobile Settings

Bar position is now configured independently for desktop and mobile. Mobile supports above or below the toolbar, defaulting to above.

Mobile — Above toolbar (collapsed)	Mobile — Above toolbar (expanded)	Mobile — Below toolbar (collapsed)

Stat Toggles

Each statistic (discussions, posts, users, latest registration) can now be individually enabled or disabled from the admin panel. Combine with the existing per-stat permissions for full control over what's shown and to whom.

Smarter Click Behavior

In desktop full-width mode, clicking anywhere on the bar expands the details panel. In classic sidebar and on mobile, only the arrow toggle expands — no accidental taps on small screens.

Inline Labels (Desktop Full-Width)

Desktop full-width mode shows lowercase, plural-aware labels next to each stat (e.g., "1 discussion", "42 posts"). Classic sidebar and mobile use tooltip-based display instead.

Accessibility

ARIA labels, roles, keyboard navigation, and screen reader support throughout the widget.

New Defaults

Widget layout now defaults to full-width (was sidebar/classic)
Desktop bar position defaults to inside the toolbar (was below)
Mobile bar position defaults to above the toolbar (was below)

Existing installations keep their current settings — these defaults only apply to new installs.

Update

composer update ekumanov/flarum-ext-forum-widgets
php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clear

CyberGene

Guys, I'm really exhausted, this is quite a complex dev and I tested as much as I could but the combinations are enormous, so let me know if something is not quite right.