Being Logged in When Outside of Forum Location

[greenhybrid]

What would the necessary code be that would allow visitors to be "logged in" to vBulletin without actually accessing the forums? For instance, I have my forums located at http://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss but if a member goes straight to http://www.greenhybrid.com/compare , I'd still like them to show up as a "guest" or logged in member in the Who's Online list, etc. They don't have to be prompted to log in, though.

On a side note, is it possible to define additional locations for the Who's Online list instead of having it say "unknown location?" My section at http://www.greenhybrid.com/learn is a vBulletin hack, but the Who's Online list doesn't recognize it and places them at the "unknown location" of the URL of the last image to load (a PHP-generated avatar). I'd like to be able to define this section.

Thanks in advance.