Forum Home Enhancements - 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.

[HuangA]

Originally Posted by UniteTheCows

Hey guys any way to make this also work with VB advanced? I could reall use this...

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...

[Floris]

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

[evss]

Thanks for the updates Floris and HuangA

[FlyBoy73]

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.

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...

[Floris]

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.

[Blue-Inc]

Originally Posted by KimmiKat

This would make a great April Fools mod! Great product!

Yep :banana:

Thanks for the Plugin Floris! :knockedout:

[HuangA]

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...

[Floris]

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

[Celtic_Mad]

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

[HuangA]

Originally Posted by Celtic_Mad

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

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 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 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