How to handle Guests

How do I handle guests searching my web site?

Do I give them a use name of guest and log them onto the database - or just let everyone have select ability?

I notice codewalkers shows how many guests are logged on and how many users are logged on. It looks great and I'd love to know how do I do that?

Also - If they all log onto the first page at once I'll have 100 (or maybe just a few) selects all at once - is there someway to handle this better - can I cache the data?

Thanks in Advance.

Nicky,

Yes.. you need to have a database to do this... check out this tutorial code!
http://codewalkers.com/seecode/75.html

Many articles have been written on the subject of counting visitors, but they all rely on a database that has to be updated every time a user visits a new page. It can become a huge stress on the server. if your site receives a lot of visitors. Luckily, there is a more efficient, clean, and faster solution to this problem.

Instead of relying on a database, an alternative method simply counts how many session files there are in the session directory. Because this method never has to read through any files, just their file names, this can take less than a millisecond to complete.

Just found this link which will be a handful one in this case!

http://www.devarticles.com/art/1/215/3

I'll take a look
many thanks