Fake Community Statistics
 

Due to the recent announcement of Internet Brands telling they are suing XenForo, I decided to immediately stop updating my vBulletin modifications, because I am not supporting this action.

installed! thx much

You're welcome.

:D does it allow to cheat on big-boards ? 500 000 posts and more ? :D :D

funny hack thanks Floris

great idea and ofcourse great work Floris... :) installed

what if everyone uses this and cheats on bigboard?

I was thinking of doing that, but your only cheating yourself.

It doesnt update vbadvanced CMPS module ;)

Why? I'd much rather make it look like users are online currently.

What the hell... Is this truly a hack 'cause it sounds funny to me.

Looks cool but isn't much advantage for a already well established board, maybe good for beginning, might use with another one of my forums :)

Interesting, Don't really see how it could be used for me though. Nice work.

Some of us worked our asses off to build up our sites and our stats and now competitors can just come in and fudge their own stats to make their site more appealing. I personally think this mod sucks and wish Floris never released it. Those of us that had to work hard for our stats just got a good screwing with this one.

Nice hack. I could see this being useful :

1. if someone might have lost all their threads due to being hacked and/or accidently deleted and they needed it to temporarly restore their thread/post count while they restored those deleted threads/posts.

2. if their downloaded backup file was too huge to upload/restore and they needed to enter everything manually by editing the thread owner/posts with a hack like this : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=98737

Otherwise it's just cheating ;) and cheaters never prosper :P

hope this doesnt alter with big-boards.

I do not know the TOS/AUP from big-boards.com, I can imagine they do not condone cheating and this is not made to support those actions.

It is initially made for smaller / new sites to give an impression of being active.


:banana: of course


The dead will walk the earth. ;)


That's right. It is not written to support third party plugins at all.


Yes, but those are different statistics, and in the first post it mentions exactly what it does do .. which means everything: it doesn't do.


No, this is not a hack, it is a plugin. A hack is when you modify an existing feature or change source code to get new functionality. This is updating a variable from an existing feature by using a hook to insert code at a specific location inside the forum software. I have no idea what your motivation is to post your comment in this thread.


Not trying to be a pain here, but obviously I've covered this:

Nice job

Thank you, I appriciate constructive feedback.. and your post qualifies. As mentioned however in the first post this is a resource someone requested and I've created it and was so kind to share it. Users are free to use it or not. Even you, who work very hard at a busy site, could use this to give a more solid impression. If you have a morale objection against that I can understand, I am fine with everything you do.

New sites could simply show 100 members, 100 posts and wait for new members to make real activity. Then they can turn it off .. this just gives them a boost. There really is no use setting it to 1000 posts and members and have someone register and not find a single member or post. They will feel cheated in and will close the browser and walk away.

These type of options added to a community are always a 50/50. Half of the admins love this (well, at least like it) and half of them don't.

This was already released in private a year ago but not in the form of a plugin. And many sites are already using my code. And this was out on vBulletin Fans Network for a while already and today I've just decided to also share it with this community.

I hope people who think they need this will use it and enjoy it. And stop using it once they no longer need it.

And just for comparison against an already existing feature. And another plugin for that matter. vBulletin allows you to change the cookie time. There are a lot of sites who set this to 7200 or load the 'users who visited today' plugin as 'who are online right now', giving incorrect values in regards to activity.


Another few good examples where people could use this. The possibilities besides using this to cheat activity are endless :D

It's a great little plugin that'll make new sites seem not so new. Just like many new forums are starting to hire some posters, or create their own fake posters to get the ball rolling. This is in the same toolbox IMO ;)

You can't use it to fake bigboards or anything like that, but I'll get the ball rolling for new admins.

Good work Floris :D

Thanks Chroder for those kind words.

Great mod ;). Surely have to say hats off to you and your good work!

Check out the code, it's not that difficult. if I can do it, you can too!

This is a sad addition.. Very disapointed.

Finally I can make my forum look busy :D

I understand where it could be useful Floris. We both know though that this is just another tool for newbies to jump into the mix and pretend to be larger than they are, thus attracting more members because they look more active than the site actually is.

Many of us have had our sites up for years and everything that went into it was old school. We had to earn the respect of our members and our activity is genuine and has been processed with old fashioned work. lol Nowadays people can just toss a site up, and immediately they are competing with the next guy who has been around for a few years.

One of my smaller sites has roughly 20,000 posts. I could use a feature like this to boost the numbers up to 200,000 and change the cookie as well....but that isn't what I am about. I guess my issue is a moral one. My sites don't have a large number of competitors as I deal in some very specific fields. It will affect those though that have a much broader topic.

Yes, mods that help new site owners to cheat bother me. lol

Thankfully I disagree with you :)

I had a phbb site that ran for 3 years before I upgraded to vbulletin. (notice I said upgraded?)

The database was so big when I moved that I deliberately deleted all threads over a month old. This will make my statistics look closer to what they are supposed to be.

*installs*

Same here. I've pruned over 5 years worth of posts, largely because I previously used UBB. As a result, I don't qualify for Big Boards (admittedly, I'm not real concerned about that either). I won't actually be using this hack but can certainly see the justification behind doing so.

Good feedback people, keep it coming.

I had the same situation with moonclamp a while back, it's a shame this hack wasn't around back then. Nevertheless it's a fab little hack and will no doubt help alot of new forums.

Thankfully you agree you're a cheat and a liar and promote the same...It's dispicable that you'd wear that avatar and post such a thing. :(

Please refrain from making personal attacks to the author of this hack or anyone else in this thread. You may not agree with the hack, that is your prerogative, but personal attacks can and will not be allowed.

There are many different ways a lot of boards twist their statistics.

This hack just give them 1 of the ways easy. The coder of such a hack is not responsible of how it is being used.

A personal attack like your post is in my opinion worse then this hack, and we don't allow post like that. So please don't use personal attacks and name-calling in the situation that you don't like a hack.

It's good for some small board. My question is if I uninstall the plug-in, my Stat. will be back normally ??

Of course. ;)

@floris

Nice hack, good work. :)

I think it?s really good for the first April.
User: "How can it be? One million more posts than yesterday?" :D :D

Everything works except the Active members. !!!

hahahahahah....hahahha nice idea....hahaa

Hope will install.....


allready we got 5-6 guest always on our board....umm using it..figure will be increase....Nice..



edit:

[high]* Zia kliks install
[/high]

sorry : edit 2nd

is there any way to show some pre-defined nick(registerd or un-registerd) always online ?
It would be very nice for us..if there any way to show few nicks always online.....?

Please give a serious thought on it..

:confused: fake guest not showing
http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/5114/fke4ti.jpg

well i recon this is great for newies starting their boards,it would make their new board look like its alive to a guest and would promote a guest to register,i'm going to have a play with this on my board for a few days and see if my staff actually notice the increase in the stats LOL,i also believe negative comments about this release are not called for,its simple dont like it dont use it,no wonder the coders are saying they have had enough,just my 2 cents worth

Thanks floris my forum was hacked last year and i lost 100,000 posts :) Just so that it doesnt seem like im cheating the system ill increment it like 2 k a day lol.

So are you going to say Big-Boards will never gonna find out about this?