How to artificially increase number showing people browsing thread

[ebp123]

How can i increase the number of people viewing a thread so it says "Topic #1 (20 viewing)". I need this to help kickstart my forum so people will be more willing to post. I know there is a way because i did it many years ago on one of my other forums but cant remember how i did it.

Thanks

Edit: I now remember it had to do with changing the cookie refresh rate, which i did to 8400, but it seems vbulletin 4.2.2 changed something.

[ozzy47]

To increase the number the way you want, that would be something that was global. So if you have 20 topics per page, and showing 20 viewing per topic, that would mean 400 total users.

Now you would need to fake that count as well.

A site looking busy, and a site being busy are two different things. Populate your site with fresh, relevant and interesting content. That will get the search engines to index you, and then get users to your site when they do a search. Search engines do not index you based on a fake number of people viewing your site. People do not do a search based on the amount of people reading something, they search for keywords. :)

[ebp123]

If people don't see anyone on the forum, they aren't going to post. Its a very simple concept. It speeds the process up greatly.

If anyone can provide any good advice, i would appreciate it.

[ozzy47]

Use a mod, vBSocial FAKE STATS 4.0 - Lite (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=316167) but you may need the pro version to get the best results.