Being as I only log on intermittently, I find that the time before a post is moved on from the new posts section too short.

I'm sure many are missed this way and there is certainly room to hold them longer as is done in other forums.

 

Thanks for the feedback studiot. It is not fully clear from the documentation how vBulletin works this out - the Today's Post listing is quite logically a list of all posts from the last 24 hours, and there is a cookie-based feature that tells you about new posts that have been updated since your last visit. Let me look through the AdminCP to see if there is a global setting, I can't see anything that suggests it is a User setting.

Dave

 

Call in on Major Geeks a few times a day - they have the best implementation I've seen.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/

Also try this Uk one. They have a problem that a post disappears from the user's view of New Posts once he has looked at it, so you can't easily go back.

http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/index.php

 

Call in on Major Geeks a few times a day - they have the best implementation I've seen.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/

Can you explain how MajorGeeks implementation works? (In brief of course).

Thanks.

Dave

 

Dave you have a pm.

 

Dave you have a pm.

Thanks. I have sent a reply asking a few clarifications. I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing at the moment - once we ascertain what exactly we are looking at we can move forward. I'll hold off looking through the AdminCP settings at the mo.

Dave

 

Dave you have a new pm at MG.

 

Dave you have a new pm at MG.

Thanks studiot, let me have a play around with it.

Regards,

Dave

 

Following your PM over at MG I've had an extensive play around with the AAC and MG implementations of the New Posts feature. My conclusions are as follows:

- The implementations at AAC and MG are the same in both structure and behaviour (except the forum filtering option in the New Post listing you gestured to in your MG PM - perhaps you could let me know how to do that over at MG so I can have a look at it here).
- The New Post search script (http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/search.php?do=getnew) searches for all updated threads since the users last active log-in time on the forums. This means:

The user goes inactive on the forums, the user is automatically logged-out by the forum software after an inactivity period (60 minutes here at AAC, might be 30 minutes at MG) and when they log back in the New Posts script will search for all threads that have been updated since the time when the user went inactive. E.g. The user goes inactive at 13.30 - the forum software logs them out at 14.30 - the user logs back in at 14.44 - the New Post script search for all updated posts since 13.30.​

- If the user does not log-out (or is not automatically logged out by the forum software), the list continually updates from last time before that (hence the New Posts list is bigger as it is continually being updated in top of the old list). Therefore it must be stressed - the cut-off point for threads is dependant, not on any time or thread number limit, but on the users log-in pattern (Incidentally I tested this with my standard privileges tester account, which hadn't logged in since 31st March. The New posts script returned 496 threads across 20 pages of results dating back to 1st April, which confirms what I have described above).
- There is a similar search script which is used by the Todays Post feature (http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/search.php?do=getdaily) - this can also be used by forum members, and will insert a limiter where threads have been updated since the last log-in time. This will only find all threads from the last 24 hours.

So this begs the question why does the AAC search seem to clear the threads quicker? I can think of two reasons:

1. MG is a larger site with more post spread than AAC, therefore there are more threads in "motion" at any one time - this will result in larger search listings. Forum statistic show that AAC has a high thread-post ratio (a large proportion of posts per thread), which would be indicative of a smaller listing.
2. Like myself, you are UK based. MG has a large UK user-base, whereas AAC has a comparatively small UK user base compared to our US, Canada, and India user base. Therefore the majority of thread activity here at AAC is primarily during our night-time. If you log out at 22.00 in the evening and then log back in at 10.00 the following morning the number of threads returned on the New Post listing is considerably larger than if this were done at any other time during the day.

Does that sound like a fair assessment?

Dave

 

Golly! Gosh!
that's told me!

what a lot of work and what a comprehensive report

Are you a Private Investigator for your day job?

Thanks Dave.

 

Golly! Gosh!
that's told me!

Apologies if it came across as a lecture, it wasn't intended that way

I write too many short concise reports!

what a lot of work and what a comprehensive report

Are you a Private Investigator for your day job?

I wish! I work in R&D where everything I do is a mystery (even to me)!

Thanks Dave.

No, thanks for bringing it up, at least I have learnt something about how this feature works, and hopefully so have others.

If you feel I have got the assessment wrong in any way please feel free to raise it - ultimately, if there is something that is not working we need to know about it so we correct it for you. Furthermore if there are features elsewhere that you feel might be useful here at AAC then please raise them - in particular, if I read you right in your MG PM you can filter the New Posts listing by forum - I would be interested in finding out more about this because I am not aware of being able to do this here at AAC.

Thanks once again.

Dave

 

in particular, if I read you right in your MG PM you can filter the New Posts listing by forum

Sorry if I gave a false impression.

I'm doing the filtering with my MK I eyeball.

What is a nuisance is when visited items in New Posts are filtered as is done in the radio repair forum in my other link.
This does not happen here or at MG.

 

Sorry if I gave a false impression.

I'm doing the filtering with my MK I eyeball.

Ahh right, thanks for the clarification. This may become a feature in future versions of the vBulletin forum software.

What is a nuisance is when visited items in New Posts are filtered as is done in the radio repair forum in my other link.
This does not happen here or at MG.

Yes, I now see how this is an issue. It seems a little strange because I would assume it is an unnecessary load on the search script and is not all that useful. I guess you become used to what you know. Needless to say it is not something I think would be in any way useful in our current implementation here at AAC.

Regards,

Dave