@Vanilla Forum Owners

R_J

See what I've just found: www.forumrankings.net There are no Vanilla Forums in the list - that's a shame

But the side is quite new and that might be a reason. I found that link which shows that the page is quite close to SMF, but nevertheless there are many big boards using other forum scripts.

peregrine

interesting.

looks like there are just a total of 161 or so individual forums listed currently.

R_J

It seems to be just two weeks old (https://www.facebook.com/smfhacks/posts/450330475107375) and for that the list is impressing.

vbgamer45

Hi all creator of that site. I am trying to include all forums that are possible.
For Vanilla I would need to write a custom script that just pulls the total member count, topics, messages.
Then I can add it as verified.

For scraping I would need a page that displays the stats to get.

Also if you can include a list of big vanilla forums I would like to know that as well. I am aware of a couple.

phreak

@vbgamer45: I love the idea behind. But isn't this an open book for exploiters once a security risk is disclosed. You'd probably can get em all of one software in 5 minutes.

This is why i don't post my boards too public in the related dev communities. Or am i totally wrong.

x00

@vbgamer45 you won't be able to get all the stats that way becuase they are not generally disclosed

some basic api tips

http://vanillaforums.org/discussions.json

see

CountDiscussions

Getting the Comment count is more difficult becuase it not disclosed

Then find the highest LastCommentID in the Discussions collection, this is not fully accurate, becuase of things like sinking, and also reordering of the discussion list.

Adding CountDiscussions + LastCommentID gives you an approximate post count.

you could do

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion.json/comment/216566

then increment until you get not comment found. You get Code 404

For users:

http://vanillaforums.org/user/summary.json/DateInserted/desc/

That gives you the last inserted UserID at the top.

If want a super accurate count. You will need to traverse. The max is 99 records at a time. In 2.1 it is actually 100 but 99 covers previous versions.

http://vanillaforums.org/user/summary.json/DateInserted/asc/99/0
http://vanillaforums.org/user/summary.json/DateInserted/asc/99/99
http://vanillaforums.org/user/summary.json/DateInserted/asc/99/198

You could even check the status of the users.

Pulling the actual denormalised count is difficult becuase it is not normally disclosed

x00

just don't DOS someone's site.

x00

@R_J said:
I found that link which shows...

A link with session id in url = not good practice.

x00

For scraping I would need a page that displays the stats to get.

I wager the core team would never approve this. it is just not Vanilla in style. Vanilla would be maybe having a plugin or two that does this, but with no guarantee it will be installed or enabled.

As phreak says quite a lot of popular site simply aren't interested in giving this information in this form.

vbgamer45

Scaping is the last resort. For verified sites I have the forum owner download a php script upload it to the main directory of their site. The script then grabs totals from the database for ranking reports. I have written them for other forum software just need to do one for Vanilla forums.

x00

This is is purely at their discretion.

I would suggest making a plugin for this. Many sites don't allow pointing to arbitrary scripts, everything in vanilla goes through a single dispatcher.

x00

$DiscussionModel = new DiscussionModel();
$DiscussionModel->GetCount();

$CommentModel = new CommentModel();
$CommentModel->GetCountWhere();

$UserModel = new UserModel();
$UserModel->GetCountWhere()

vbgamer45

Thanks will check it out. I have done some small vanilla plugins in the past. Only other stat I would like to get is the version number or tell what file it is in to scan it.

vbgamer45

@phreak will it is a list but it is the same information that people can find from search engines and most malware writers anyway do not pay close attention and try the attack anyway whether it works on the site or not.

x00

APPLICATION_VERSION constant.

vbgamer45

Added a vanillaforums 2.1 verification script to forumrankings.net big thanks to x00 in getting it working.