jcole

Well, there have been a lot of flames about the subject, so I thought I would settle the topic, on which board has how many users. And here are the numbers as of a little while ago:TanTalk 587Suntanning.com 629TanToday 957How did I arrive at these numbers? Glad you asked. In case you haven’t noticed, all three boards use the same software, and this software comes with the source code. So we all have the source for each other’s boards. Unfortunately, this didn’t help very much since the software is well written and if you have the current version, no know security exploits. Since I really didn’t want to hack into anyone else’s site, and I don’t have admin privileges on the other sites (in fact, I’ve never created an account at the other boards), I tried to think of a way anyone could find out the information. 10 minutes later, I found the right question to ask :-)I had noticed that the software uses a fairly simple method of storing user information. In fact, it numbers the accounts in sequential order. So I asked our board for my profile, and TanTalk responded (as it should) that I wasn’t allowed access to the file. So now I could see exactly how many users each board had.What? Ok, let me go further. You see it wasn’t the board software that gave me the 403 Forbidden error, it was the web server. I then knew that I could ask the web server for each users info, and if the user existed, then it would tell me to bug off (or bite me in other moderators words ;-). BUT, if the user didn’t exist, the web server couldn’t find the file and answered with a 404 File Not Found. Here is an example:Someone at TanTalk has their info at: http://www.tantalk.com/cgi-bin/Members/00000593.cgi If no one has created a new account, then the next spot is at http://www.tantalk.com/cgi-bin/Members/00000594.cgi If that’s taken, keep adding one until you get a HTTP 404 – File Not Found.That user number is the Maximum number of users the board could have (In fact each board has less, due to some accounts having been deleted). In order to find the actual number, I wrote a small program to scan each number until it found the end. It turns out that this his exactly how the software the boards use to calculate its user numbers. I just use the web server to find out. And you can too, use the following links to confirm the maximum number yourself:Suntanning.com http://www.salontanning.com/cgi-bin/Members/00000631.cgi Tantoday http://64.70.221.191/cgi-bin/ubb/Members/00001000.cgi (Congrats to the last person to register at TanToday, your User id is 1000!!! 42 more and Bruce will be able to celebrate his 1000th user!)I bet your wondering if anyone can salt their Member directory, and the answer is yes they could, but because of the way the board software works, that would mess the board up worse than running out of disk space!Maybe now we can all find out for ourselves and call the matter closed.

Kevin

This is Fine and All but i have a Few Questions everyone is talking about Registered people and all but what does this really show i have atleast 5 names Registered here and at SunTanning.com i only have 1 at Tan Today so if everyhas just 2 names then what does that show nothing so why is everyone crying over registared people??????? and Chunn how many Employees do you have on this board?????So what does this all show NOTHING AT ALL Kevin

solid

it does show that bruce lied about his numbers. He quoted 1377 at one point.

Kevin

like i said what does registared users mean????/????/????

solid

I'm only stating the fact that Bruce is a liar. You're too scared to admit that Bruce did lie about his numbers. It wouldn't have been so bad if was off by 10 or 20, but he added 400 to his number. He lied, and you know it.solid[ 06-25-2001: Message edited by: solid ]

BOBER96

solid~Tell us something we don't know.

Tan Larue

Activity on the site is what counts!I think on most of the sites there's under 100 POSTERS but, alot more "lurkers"

solid

Good point. There are a lot of lurkers on all 3 sites.

Kevin

yes he did lie

jcole

There are 16 Sandollar employees registered on TanTalk. The last to register was April 15, the one before that February 2001, user #309.[ 06-25-2001: Message edited by: jcole ]