Just had to share...

[Garreg]

You know, when you do something 'naughty' but 'fun'....?

Well, I had one of those moments today, I installed a hack on one of my forums (it has around 1800 members all aged between 12-18) and its made me chuckle all day

The hack allows you to type in a code that is replaced with the members name of who ever is reading the post.... as I'm waiting for a patch to get Sigma chat working again, the chat rooms are presently off line. one member posted how boring it was that there was no chat room. I replied that a fix was due etc.. etc.. and that also missed chatting with my favourite member - you guessed it... because of the hack, who ever read it thought 'they was my fav member' LOL.

So far my post is getting loads of replies all along the lines of " Awe shucks.. never knew you cared", "I miss chatting to you as well" etc... none of them have a clue what is going on

Am I sad or what!

[DigitalSkyline]

thats slick haha

[admin]

lol very sad.

[Garreg]

I was going to tell them, but so many of them have bit... I haven't got a heart to disappoint them....

Some have even PM'd me.. as they think I don't like them LOL... Kids!

[Garreg]

If anyone has Vbulletin v3.5 installed and wants to try this, here's the link to the hack -> http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93500

[Brangwyn]

lol very kewl.

[mresell]

Okay....little too much extra time on your hands garreg.

[DigitalSkyline]

As far as marketing goes though... people have been using that for ages... just like a mail merge. You could use this and make a post "to username..." then sell them something that's a deal just for them haha.

[Garreg]

These Kids are smart.... I should have realised that they would work it out - and, turn the joke round on me...

They've caught me out a couple of times now... suppose there's some truth in 'He who laughs first....."

[Silverbug]

hehe classic

[awen]

*G* Too funny... I did much the same thing a while back for one of my chat sites... It was a random quote generator... To begin with, any member could post to the quotes database, everytime they refresh their page the random quote would appear below the chat messages... I called the random quoter "The Oracle", and identified its posts with "The Oracle Says: " with the quote following.

Later I did something like Garregs hack that would insert the username of the person reading it, I also threw one in for the current day, and maybe one or two others, I forget...

Just like garreg, I got all kinds of responses from that. To make matters "worse" the random quote for some reason often seem to tie into the active conversation even though it is a pure random script.

That gave me an idea, so I created a new database of responses, and turned it on in all of my rooms. This brought "TheOracle" to life, and it would monitor each post for specified words or phrases. If it detected a match it would insert a post into the chatroom, as if it were a real chatter. I also would have it welcome each user when they first arrived.

Yeah I know, not too new an idea... a "Chat Bot", but lemme tell you some of these folks went crazy. Half swore it was some user chatting to them, the other half got freaked out that it was "intelligent". I ended up removing it from all the rooms, and left it up just in one for those who enjoyed the toy.

Interacting with your site visitors can be so funny...

[dpyers]

I miss the old Usenet Oracle. He was a savage bunny.