new post graphics expiring

Aye, this is a pain. It has come to the point where I won't pay my morning visit to the forums until I'm sure that I have time to pour through all the new posts, lest they lose their flag.

It's to do with the (terrible - IMO) logic behind the forum software.

If the forum actually handled new posts correctly, showing new posts on a per-forum basis then all would be OK. As is, the software just has one time stamp and the whole forum is marked not-new once you've visited the main page, but this logic is obviously flawed.

Very annoying actually :-\. The way to fix this is to (move to a better forum software ) flag messages as new if the date you visited that _thread_ is newer than the timestamp on the messages within. I.e. the new flag should be an extra column next to every post within a thread, and not just one big change for the whole forum.

Ugh, I'm usless with trying to 'tell' this, it would be much easier for me to show you this in code :-\.

Bear with me and I'll try and get a decent example.

Quote: Originally posted by Wil
The way to fix this is to (move to a better forum software )

Like what? vBulletin is cream of the crop - I guess we can hope 3.0 (coming out in Q3, I think) corrects this. It's not a bug or error, just the way vB handles sessions. At least it handles sessions to this extent - you don't realize competitors like UBB don't even let you "View newest post", etc. like vB. But let's not get into that.

Actually I think that it is a new VB problem. It hasn't done it in the past. I visit three different sites daily that run Vbulletin. Two have started doing this. One does not. The one that does not is version 2.2.2. The one that does is version 2.2.0. I am not sure if this site even has a version any more.

I've always had problems with this here though. Quite often, anyway... I didn't notice with the last version we were running, but maybe the one before that, I'm not sure. Usually I try to save the potentially long posts (usually critiques) for the end of my visit but sometimes I forget.

It's completely a fixable issue... But we have to agree on the fix.

The reason it does this is because one of the customizable features of vb is it allows me to tell it when to assume a person is no longer here. Currently, if there is no activity from a user for 15 minutes on the forums, the software assumes you are no longer here and it resets your last visit time to the last time it had activity... That way, at least you know where there are and are not new posts.

This is completely logical as the forum software must reset itself at some point as most users don't click that little "Mark All Forums Read" link... Most just move on and without this feature, they would come back to a whole forum full of "unread" posts since the software didn't reset itself.

Would it be better at say 30 minutes? There has to be a limit somewhere, or else the forums will never tell you new and old posts.

But this surerly is a fault in the underlying logic.

The forum should never reset posts at a given time; only when the user instructs it to using a feature such as mark forum read.

Each individual post, and thread should have a timestamp, and should be shown as _new_ unless the user views the post. Each thread should have a timestamp and should be shown as read/new if there are any unread posts within the thread. Each forum should be shown as new if there are any posts within since last visit, and then have an option of if a user enteres the forum then the forum will be marked read on the main category list.

The _only_ forum I know of that handles sessions correctly is GForum. Don't take my word for it, though - try it out; sign up for an account and notice how they handle sessions.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/forum/

Quote: Originally posted by Chad Simper
The reason it does this is because one of the customizable features of vb is it allows me to tell it when to assume a person is no longer here. Currently, if there is no activity from a user for 15 minutes on the forums, the software assumes you are no longer here and it resets your last visit time to the last time it had activity... That way, at least you know where there are and are not new posts.

Ah, that explains it. 15 minutes is too short for me - 30 would probably be better. It's too bad that it can't tell the difference between no activity because you've left and no activity because you're taking a really long time to compose a post.

To overcome the time problem, I click preview or refresh the page. That resets the time.

There is a difference between 'new' and 'read' posts. vB indicates 'new' posts, not read posts. It would take up too much space to indicate 'read' posts (# posts x # members = lots).

I'm no PHP expert but is there any way one could set the session expiry time limit within their own personal preferences?

This way people could set up their own timespan to read new posts...

Just an idea, shoot me if I'm way off the mark!
:flame:

Quote: Originally posted by Wil
Each individual post, and thread should have a timestamp, and should be shown as _new_ unless the user views the post. Each thread should have a timestamp and should be shown as read/new if there are any unread posts within the thread. Each forum should be shown as new if there are any posts within since last visit, and then have an option of if a user enteres the forum then the forum will be marked read on the main category list.

The _only_ forum I know of that handles sessions correctly is GForum. Don't take my word for it, though - try it out; sign up for an account and notice how they handle sessions.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/forum/

Each individual post does have a timestamp (obvious by the fact that the date and time of the post is displayed). Everything you pointed out in the first paragraph above is already integrated in the vB forum software... That's exactly how the software works in my experience.

The forum resets posts at a given time at my own discretion... I have told the software to reset posts at a given time... It doesn't have to. But, your logic is different than mine on this issue as I don't think removing this option is logical.

Mark pointed out another excellent point - How in the hell would you track what users have read what posts and what users have visited what threads without a huge resource burden???

Flipper, your suggestion is one that has come to mind... It is possible, but it would take some time ... It's something that I definitely have added to my to-do list.

Ah, now that does make sense.

I don't think adding an extra table to a SQL database to handle sessions would be too much 'burden'. An SQL call to a well-configured database only takes a fraction of a second, if that. And to update that database it would just take the same.

GForum is more than likely based on WWWThreads in a lot of respect, and yes, it does handle sessions by it's own table in the database. I really think this is the only way to go if you want full control over your users sessions.

Perl does have a few modules for this ont he CPAN network - although a module is usually an overkill for this type of thing. I didn't realise that PHP had session management intergrated into the core of the language.