Wow MP hopping tonight

[ozzydiodude]

Thanks MarP

 

[trillions of atoms]

Heheheee

 

[Auburn1985]

Ok, let me reveal the secret!

The online members thingy is timed by a certain time you can set manually in the forum admin area. It was set at 15 minutes before, meaning after 15 minutes you will go off the list. Most forums extend this time setting by much more then 15 minutes because the forums will look more busy/active.

So, I thought maybe it helps to make the forum more active by pretending we have a lot of members online which most forums do too. Yesterday it was set to 2 hours and since last night I put it up to 24 hours. The nice thing is you can see how many members have visited the forum within the last 24 hours.

I humbly suggest that it be put it back the way it was...accurate, non-inflated reporting of current members/users online...please...just my humble opinion sir...pretending won't help us...at least I don't think it will...please forgive me for humbly disagreeing...

 

[MoNoXiDe]

it looks like were being invaded by bots for sure. 3rd random post I've come across.

 

[Runbyhemp]

Yeah but all these members did not log on in last 24 hours. If you try to click on some of the names it will tell you that you don't have priviliges to view and others you click on will tell you they joined in last couple of days.

What's more they are are not real names, they are randomly generated.

There's a vb plugin which allows you to create fake users to make forum look busier. I suspect that's what is being used here.

I agree with Auburn, put it back the way it was. Makes the place look dishonest and it's a cheap stunt imho.

 

[basement]

I concur, please change the cookies back to the regular 15mins

 

[MarPassion]

Yeah but all these members did not log on in last 24 hours. If you try to click on some of the names it will tell you that you don't have priviliges to view and others you click on will tell you they joined in last couple of days.

What's more they are are not real names, they are randomly generated.

There's a vb plugin which allows you to create fake users to make forum look busier. I suspect that's what is being used here.

I agree with Auburn, put it back the way it was. Makes the place look dishonest and it's a cheap stunt imho.

There's no fake plugin running here. What I did was closed archived pages which got 3000 unique visitors a month (more then this forum) mostly from Google, because Google likes the archived pages.
https://www.google.nl/search?client...e:marijuanapassion.com/forum+++archive&rls=en

It now all directs to the main forum.

Why I did this? Because those visitors searched for something, found it on our page and leave. What's in it for us? Nothing, only cost data traffic. It's only good for Google

We have been attacked by spam bots. It's hard to get rid off. I closed registrations now because of it. I have secret question/answers on but even that they can solve. It's crazy.

 

[MarPassion]

Here's the tracker from the archived pages
http://extremetracking.com/open?login=dsfoijhf

It got way more visitors than this forum. Which is crazy. Google changed a lot by sending visitors to free pages. We have to stand up for ourselves :icon_smile:

 

[MarPassion]

Ok, it's back up to normal. But that doesn't mean the spammers are away! I hope they stay away because I closed down registration for new members. So that should calm it down a bit. Can try to open up for new registrations in a few days and see what happens.

 

[Runbyhemp]

I hear you on the spammer front. I also run a forum (non mj related) and have big problems with them. I had spambots automatically generating new accounts every few minutes. I set all signups to email verification only. This cut spammers in half as a lot of them signup with made up email addys.

It does take me a few mins each day to manually go through new signups but its quite easy to spot which ones are legit and which ones are not.

 

[WeedHopper]

Stupid Bots.

 

[MarPassion]

I hear you on the spammer front. I also run a forum (non mj related) and have big problems with them. I had spambots automatically generating new accounts every few minutes. I set all signups to email verification only. This cut spammers in half as a lot of them signup with made up email addys.

It does take me a few mins each day to manually go through new signups but its quite easy to spot which ones are legit and which ones are not.

We have a question answer option on the registration page and can write our own questions and answers and now even that is discovered in some kind of way by the bots. I made a custom question a few days ago and that didn't even stop the bots. I'm clueless.

Plus there's a captcha and email verification. Imagine that! It's crazy!

 

[Auburn1985]

Ok, it's back up to normal. But that doesn't mean the spammers are away! I hope they stay away because I closed down registration for new members. So that should calm it down a bit. Can try to open up for new registrations in a few days and see what happens.

Thanks MarP...we'll be just fine...thank you sir for running the best MJ web site on the internet...bar none...yours is the best...by far...again, thank you...

 

[Gary Ganja]

yea sometimes i look at the (now viewing) numbers and it be like 600 people viewing grow journals and im like well why is my journal so dry lol i think its just not interesting enough (just yet) ive got better with orienting my pics haha. Im always logged on here and reading, and def honing my skills with you guys help, MP is where it all started for me