[Floris]

Originally Posted by nsusa

Active users does not seem to work.

Because if you've read the first post, it wasn't an option in 0.01, download the zip which is 0.02 and hopefully that's what you're looking for.

Originally Posted by UniteTheCows

Any way to update vbadvanced?

You would have to ask the support from vBAdvanced this question, I didn't code this for supporting third party plugins.

Originally Posted by rex_b

My .02



Floris can release whatever he wants, he does not owe any of us any type of social responsilibity and it is the responsiblity of the users not to abuse this hack. With that said yes their will be people to abuse it and will they get anywhere from it, I think not b/c you can inflate your stats all you want but if you don't have activity nobody will stay.



Also what if they get on BB, does it really mean anything?



This is Free Market at it's best.

Glad you like the hack! And thanks for those 2 cents, i will use them to buy some icecream.

Originally Posted by monkeywarplane

Exactly, it's a nice option for me since I lost 3 years of threads/posts. Don't think i'll use it though.



Stuart

Thank you Enjoy it

Originally Posted by HuangA

If someone were to inflate active user count, what would WOL say for the inflated users? I'd perassume nothing since they don't really exit. This would mean all Big Boards would have to check is whether or not the user values are really 'true' by seeing the WOL and do a quick tally

Update is .. wait .. you've made it

0.02

Originally Posted by rixthemix@aol.c

mines not workin either

Can't help you sorry.

Originally Posted by FlyBoy73

Big-Boards perm-bans/blocks sites from their index that are found to be using this. There are quite a few that you can see on the list that are no longer there and almost all of them are for faking their post counts.

I am sure they have a policy on cheating, I hope they enforce it. That said, unless you work for big-boards you're post is just an guess.

Originally Posted by FlyBoy73

Something for those of you who do not like this hack (mostly those who built their forums the old fashion way)... It can fake certain "counts" but it cannot fake content. At the end of the day it is content that brings in the masses. Search engines index content - not post / thread / member totals.



The majority of people who are going to be interested in this type of mod don't have much in the way of content. They can say they have millions of posts but how does that bring in more members & visitors? It doesn't.. Having ten's of thousands to millions of links in each search engine does, and in a big way.



Back to Big-Boards... Someone could fake getting into the 500k minimum index but after that they are going to be stuck. If they try and add 20k at a time after that and all that shows up is huge increments beyond the base line each day that B-B picks up their account will be flagged. To even have a chance getting away with this the scammer would have to change their number every day without fail and within a reasonable amount. That won't last long and they will be black balled..



As for "pruning".. My personal opinion on that is you might as well pull out a knife and cut off your communities fingers and toes little by little... There is never a good excuse to prune in my book. If you are so big that you have to prune you surely have not looked into monetizing your forums... Because if it is that big you should be able to make the money to cover its existence. If not, PM me and I'll pay you for your "junk" unless it is just post-whoring comments..

I agree, you get your content from the search engine results, however. If these visitors join the site and they run into 5 members, 5 posts and threads in stats they feel the site is not going anywhere and they feel less provoked to register and post. However, if it instead would say 50 users, with 50 posts and threads .. they feel more provoked to register and create some increased activity for your forum. Once you are around those stats you could reset the value to 0 or decrease it and become a real-er more active community and you no longer need the plugin. Trust me, a lot of vb support questions are 'how do i change these numbers, i want to look more busy'.

Originally Posted by HuangA

I added an extra vboption value, an extra replacement, and an extra plugin...

now I have fake guest counts. Why guest counts? Because guests cannot

be seen on the WOL by normal registered users (only admins and I think mods

can see), so it gives the false sense that your forums are more busy than it

currently is. It wouldn't be hard to add a few online member counts as well

(claim invisible mode). However, that is VERY UNETHICAL in my view and

should not be used unless your forum is really dying. And even then, this will

only give the false impression, not new posts unless you are posting lots on

fake accounts to bring more activity to the forums. If Floris don't mind,

and if anyone is interested, feel free to PM me for it :X



Edit:

oops, I noticed now after some more testing that normal users CAN see

guest and spiders on the online.php list. So I made some thing else...

add fake invisible users. Well, both options are there, I can add both

fake invisible users (which normal users doesn't see in online.php, but

vb might have a bug about it), and fake guests which will look strange

on the online.php (because fake guest does not have entries on online.php

listing but is counted on top)



Edit 2:

Contacted Floris about this, provided him with the xml file for both guests

and invisible users. Floris will update it shortly after testing it.



Edit 3:

Yay, its updated.



Ok, here's what the new one adds.

Guests, don't we all love guests They'll look weird if people really pay attention and follow the WOL / online.php page, because fake guests doesn't have entries like real guests.

Invisible users, they act just like a user logged in with "using invisible mode" option enabled; except, they won't be detected by your other hacks (IE: users online in the last 24 hours hack) because they don't exist at all!



One thing to note:

This addon does NOT affect your highest amount of members online at the same time, because I don't want to add additonal queries to the hack. If you want to do that, you'd have to modify the plugin for forumhome to do that. Refer to code in index.php for what you need and what variables to use. I don't think I'll support that unless a lot of people really want that to be part of the option.



Questions? Post it. I'll answer asap.

Comments? Post it. I'm sure myself and Floris would both love to see it.

Complains? Post it... we've already seen some, and I suppose it won't hurt to see a few more :X

Yes, it is official, your contribution as helping member on this community is rewarded with updating the original resource and giving you the credit

version 0.02 is the current .zip - there are no bug fixes, code changes or improvements for version 0.01 so there's no need to upgrade unless you require the additional functionality as updated in the first post.

Enjoy.