I really don't know vBadvanced to do this, and I don't have access to an installation of vBa to do that. Does vBa have its own hook locations? Does vBa support the plugin system? I used vBa back when I'm on 3.0, but I've never even touched it with 3.5... If anyone would be so kind to give me a temp admin account on a vBa (via PM), I'll try to look into that tonight after I come home. No guarentees that I can make it work though (because I honestly don't know vBa 2).

Edit:
I found a place where I have access... Looks like if I were to add something on the global_complete part and use a defined check for vba_portal, I might be able to do it. Where do I get vBa2's php files again?

Edit2:
Ok, I think I can do this, anyone want to give me a test bed? I don't have a local copy, and my production site is a forum site, not a portal based site, so I'm not gonna deploy vBa there just to do this...

I can give you admin access to www.omgboards.com where i have vbadvanced installed.

Thanks for the updates Floris and HuangA

Floris,

I don't have to work for big-boards to tell you how they handle things. If memory serves me correctly, they have commented about this very thing (bogus stats) online, though you might not have access to this yourself. However, it really is a non-issue as far as I am concerned. Simple math proves when a forum is using a bogus post / thread / member count hack like this.

Personally, I don't care... Like I have said... Those who really have the stats reap the exponential rewards of their content.. Most users online today are going to fast-track it to find what they want, and if they can't find it, they will continue on in search of it. Someone can start up a forum like my big-board and use your stats but the only way anyone will find it is if they find individual (personal) links posted. Otherwise they are going to come to my links first in most all search engine results, as well as other locations online.

Do I dislike your hack? Nope.. I'm always happy to see new hacks come out and this doesn't worry me at all like it does some. It's a fuzzy feel-good hack at best for those with new forums. The worst thing someone could do is install this and think it will give them a shortcut to success. The only way anyone is going to be successful with a forum is with a lot of hard work and dedication... Oh, and time... :)

Thing is very simple: This is not made to assist users who want to cheat big-boards.com, nor is it made because it is innovating. A user could edit a template and appear to have a million posts where in fact they're not.

Despite that, version 0.03 will include bbcompliance and I am contacting big-boards to inform them that we do so.

Yep :) :banana:

Thanks for the Plugin Floris! :knockedout:

CMPS STATS ALTERING WILL NOT BE SUPPORTED until they include hooks system for use to edit the content resulting from the modules.... I spent like 2 to 3 hours just keep on trying out different things and there's no way of getting things to work with it without screwing things up or editing their code (both unpleasable). When they include hooks to their code, I can try to edit the plugin to work with it.

Big-Boards have a method to check how much values you really have now, so those that are saying this will screw things over with big boards, it won't anymore ;) I am not going to disclose how this is done, and you are not going to try to get around it. If you do go and get around it, you're being an ass and a cheater, big board admins can also do math...

Due to populair demand and a finished admincp help section here's 0.03 just a day after the 0.02 release to cover big-boards.com compliance.

The first post has been updated, please read it before you post here.

Thanks again everybody for the installs, it shows that many people appriciate the resource and that many are using it. I recommend nobody to misuse this plugin to cheat big-boards as I've emailed them about the bbcompliance and updated the plugin to support them.

Bugs? Report them!
Support? Good luck!
Suggestions? Post them!
Feedback? Be productive & constructive
Requests? Post them!

Improved the plugin? Let me know in #vBorg on irc.vbulletin.org and we will look into it and update the code perhaps and give you credit.

[edit]
Screenshots (8!!+.zip) added Enjoy

Is it possible to fake these statistics to match the fake ones at the bottom of the page?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/

It might be possible, I have to look into it. Not today though, I've promised my forum members that I'd draft the user rules and update stuff for far too long (and still haven't gotten to it yet). The two problems I'm seeing with that is 1) I might not be able to identify whether or not its really a forum I'm appending stats to (what if its a link/directory?). And the display options inside would show the real value anyways (there's no way to tell which forum we inflated the fake values to). My best suggestion is still to not lie about posts/threads :p But, I'll look into it when I have a chance...

[del]Another thing on my to look for list is to also inflate the 'most online was ### at some time' thing to reflect your fake guests and fake invisible users. This one is fairly easy to do, I think I've found a way to do it without queries. So I'll look into this as I slack off and not pay attention in class later today in the afternoon if I don't sleep in it :X[/del]

Edit: Scratch the above, I got this done now... gonna wait a bit before releasing though, else people get really tired of keep on updating :p and plus, I need to go through Floris to update the package. We'll include this in the next update (maybe with more features ;)) For now, lemme check out the forumbits thing...

Edit2: Added another extra plugin, now you can choose which forum to dump the fake posts in ;) Floris is also working on some neat cool feature. We'll release it later when we have it ready :D

not trying to be a pain but in this screen it shows x amount of members and x amount off guests currently active,but actually no usernames below,is there a way to add fake usernames as well?just a thought
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2006/05/4.jpg

HuangA:

You can make a sum of deviding the total new threads / total forums, and then add that value on top of the real total threads per forum value. Same for x viewing and x posts, etc. I think this is overkill which is why I haven't included it.

most users online was existing value + fake value. This way it always matches the currently online was as a higher value. . i think. I will look into this too.

That's a nice idea, and currently not an option but I will look into it. If you figured out how to do it let me know and we will review it for inclusion.

as a option maybe you could include a box where we can type the name we want .
also most user online dont change for me would be nice to have a way to upgrade the numbers.
but anyway thanks for this mod help make some of my small forum alive in combination with rss feed.

Floris, I already got the most user online thing added. And the way I solved the post count not adding up problem is added a config option for user to choose which forum to 'dump' the posts into. It must be a forum that have its count showing on forumhome though, because I got it to add the number during forumbit_parse hook, and so it won't check your subforums on forumhome (where it really matters).

Next part is to edit forumdisplay to check whether or not it is the 'dump' forum and make it always add the extra posts in the 'showing x of y' part at bottom.

Edit: done as well, you have the latest, just export away when you're ready ;)

Comment about the admincp help. It appears that 3.5 allows you to export the admincp help items, but it doesn't import them. So .. we have to manually do this now.

yourforum.com/dir/admincp/help.php?do=files enter this url manually in the admincp and import the vbulletin-adminhelp-fake.xml file.

Here is more info: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/bugs3...view&bugid=928

Thanks MarcoH64 for helping out :)

That's what I've made so far, an input box where nicks can be entered. But .. where do you want these nicks to link to? :)

Becareful there, if you link to a real user profile, it'll be bad because if someone follow the link, your last activity will be when you last did something, which may or may not be within the cookie timeout (IE: wtf, current online 2 users, me and this other user, but the other user haven't moved since 3 days ago!) and you can't really fake an entry in the WOL/online.php with the fake usernames (location won't be easy to change without increasing load, and again, time issue). If you really want to fake users, I strongly advice the invisible user feature because that's most 'realistic' and only your mod/admin/those that you grant access to see invisible users will be able to see something 'strange' (3 users online, just my name listed, no name* listed).

was thinking of maybe 2 option point to a :
1.you do not have permission to access this page or member profile.

or maybe the members names I enter could be actually members I register manually and the names can point to there profiles .
(I will try to find how to Add new Users automatically)

New users>
AdminCP > Users > Add User

One idea I have is to include the nicks from the showgroups.php pages (staff) as these are real users and should be online anyway. However, to get this done it requires one or more queries and I am trying to avoid queries alltogether.

When can we expect the next update?

When it is done.

This is a cool hack and I don't understand some of the people posting the nasty things they have posted.

You can have the busiest forum in the world, and people wouldn't join it just because everyone else has.

Forum admins have being finding ways to manipulate their stats for ages, this is nothing new. This is just a tool that saves them time, nothing more. It wouldn't stop them from finding other ways of doing it. It would allow a lot of BB admin noobs to learn some of the tricks that the rest of us had to learn through hard toil.

And as for the people claiming it will affect them who have worked to do things the hard way building aup slowly etc etc etc, I say nonsense. Hands up anyone in here claiming that who did NOT register more than one account for themselves on their own forum ???

A good forum is created by ingenuity of differing methods. This is just one of theose ingenious methods. Make your site look busy, make it look big, but whatever you do, don;t make it look empty whilst using the hack! You have to work hard at it every day.

I for one have no problem manipulating my forum stats. No scruples, no conscience, NOTHING. Why not ? because I spent years posting on other forums, helping some geezers I never knew build up good communites with nothing more that casual thanx here and there, whilst they rake in good money on advertising and sponsorship. AND MOST OF US HAVE DONE THINGS LIKE THAT. Instead, do it on your own forums now! Spend your days there talking to all your imaginery friends until some real ones come along. :banana:

This little tool just makes the quick birds eye view of statistics look good a quicker way, so well done.

Thank you for the kind reply, Krispy1812. Yes, even though I authored most of the fake users online part, I must honestly say that I do have multiple fake/test users on my own forums, and most of my other admins also have them too. This is only used to inflate the numerical readings, but the actual content (which drives members to join) cannot be replaced by serious hard elbow greese.

And also, you can't really fake big numbers with this. Look at the example picture attached in the first post. 5000 online users and 5000 online guests seems just a little bit odd for me ;) Even 50 fake online users and guests (combined) is a bit too much for a booster-required-forum if you ask me...

If anyone wants to donate a spare vBulletin license and prove me wrong, please feel free to do so. Install this hack and make no posts on your own forum. Advertise it if you want, see how much traffic you can get, and how many people will register. I can reassure you that the turn around rate will be very low even if it looks like you have users online ;)

Anyways, I need to hunt down Floris and ask him what happened to the release :p

I can't tell you, lol ;)

looking to use this just had a question, when you do this and your current online number surpasses your most users ever online number, does the most ever online change to keep up with the number created by this hack?

Not in version 0.03 no.

It will in 0.04 though ;)

*baps Floris* :p

So what will the new features be in 0.04?

Yeah you kinda need that - Currently Active Users: 89

most ever online 39.... hmmmm lol

ok here you go guys an addon for it: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=117130

Currently confirmed (as I've already got coded since like 24th or 25th) features for 0.04 are:
- Updates the max counter as needed
- Option to add fake post count to a specific forum id
- I think on the faked forums, it'll add the fake post count to the "Currently showing x of y" string

I think Floris was doing some other stuff as well, but I don't know what are the status on his end. I coded the stuff on his forum, and then kind of just left it as is because I think its good enough for release... I'd release the product for 0.04 with the stuff I already have if I have access, but I don't, so you guys gotta wait or use rogersnm's addon :p

i have made a mod for the max counter :)

Can we expect 0.04 within the next few hours then?:)

Nice idea Floris

What about options to increment these numbers too?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/

I asked for this a while back and it's been added into 0.04 which we are all eagerly awaiting:)

Why are so many complaining? Actually you could just go to phpmyadmin and change a few values here and there, and you wont be a cheater because you never installed "that evil plugin" lol

calm down guys. If you keep complaining, you wont get this hack unlisted. If you dont like it, just keep on browsing other hacks.

My 2 cents.

Cool. Thanks.

Yep, I am packing up the release 0.04 right now and it will be downloadable soon. So no additional addon from roger is required then anymore.

dam :(

[high]* rogersnm goes of and cries[/high]
[high]* rogersnm doesn't like you any more[/high]
:p

A little suggestion though.

in the who's viewing this thread you should make it so it chooses a number between x and y (userset) for the guests because other wise it's a bit fake..