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Most users ever online was 220 on Sun Aug 14, 2011 2:12 pm
be manipulated on the backend of a website and if so how.
Well, basically I believe it is in the database and data could be manipulated if you know what you are doing but even then it is extremely complicated to change this sort of data. I can tell you on the back end, you have the option of changing the time it searches for. We made ours 60 minutes but the longer time you use the slower your site can go. I think it would be very difficult to truly change those numbers because they change all the time.
One time we had an orphan forum that got stuck at the top of the CF forum and I had to consult with a database specialist to find it, and he still could not find it. We had to create a new forum and delete the old one to get rid of it. So, I seriously doubt it would be worth anyone's time to manipulate something like that. On this forum we would never dream of doing something like that anyway. Best answer I can give you. I could call our coder to find out what he thinks but I am pretty sure he would say the same.
I do not know because I am not a database expert. All I know is I can't imagine anyone doing that deliberately. If they asked someone to do that for them it would be unethical, in my view, but I really do not know the answer to that question.
If by the 'backend' you mean administrative access through the standard forum software, the answer to all of your questions is no, other than changing the length of time used to determine the number of users online, which is automatically reflected in the information presented.
If someone with access to the forum programs has the programming knowledge and the desire, the forum programs could be modified to reflect altered statistics in many ways, such as introducing multipliers on the real data. I'm not sure what the side effects might be, if any, and have no interest in expending the time and effort to figure that out
Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again - Jeanne Pincha-Tulley
Comprehensive is Latin for there is lots of bad stuff in it - Trey Gowdy
Having been a co-admin on another board before the main deployed to Afganistan I can say that when we were setting things up and testing we generated a lot of board traffic just on our own. We had the option of utilizing those numbers and subtracting 'actual' participant numbers for accurate measure which would have been the easy way.
Instead and with a quite a bit of effort we actually were able to regenerate the numbers to eliminate our testing/false number recordings and it boiled down to manipulating post count by/per member, board settings and default adjustments, and over all 'fooling' the system twice.... once to create a clean slate, the second time to get it accurate to date/time, etc. We laughed and joked because it seemed very "hacker" like in our minds but always figured there were techies out there who'd just shake their heads and come up with something easier. However every time we've ever discussed it with more computer savvy friends they typically agree it was an act of accidental genius on our part.
So the short answer is "yes" it actually can be done with some board formats. But its a TON of work and carefully trained eyes could potentially spot the variance.
