I suspect someone not authorised is reading the moderators forum (somehow). is there any way to log who all accessed a particular forum?

version?

6.2.3

The only way I can think of is to put a small logger (file logger would do) using the error_log php function.

You create a file on your computer (empty text file) and you upload it on your site. You make the file writeable. Then in the showflat and showthreaded files you introduce the logging facility using as the output source the text file you have just uploaded (make sure the path and name of the file passed to the error_log function are correct.

You can collect any number of data and regarding the user that reads that forum. One of them would be their IP address, time etc. A simple if statement can restrict logging only to the board you are interested in.

couldn't he also turn on a function within SQL to do this as well? I know that MySQL has different levels of logging as well as Apache but I am not as familiar with eithers functions.

I haven't explored that but you will run to the following problems:
1- You need to have access to the MySQL installation and be able to increase/decrease logging and restart the service
2- The way UBBT is programmed is that only one user accesses the database and in the database other "virtual" users exist to access the board. If you introduce logging in the database then you will only get the user that connects to the database and not the users that log into the forum.

He could create a dummy thread with a link to an unknown page in that particular forum. That would then generate an error message within Apache which would log IP address trying to access "page not found" (or whatever error) then he could compare IP addresses to users. Not sure if this is the long way to do it but it was an idea.

thanks guys, trying the 1st and 3rd options out as I am always nervous trying to touch SQL.

Let me know if it works as I am curious