Thread and Forum Marking -- Explain?

[MjrNuT]

Hello,

My search came up empty using what I have in my thread title. Apologies if my search was just poor, so please feel free to link me. This seems to be the right place for my followon questions, also.

Question 1:

I'm asking for help on someone explaining a bit more on the thread/forum marking in addition to the help dialog. Here is that portion:

This option controls how threads and forums are marked as read.
1. Inactivity/Cookie Based - once a user has been inactive for a certain amount of time (the value of the session timeout option) all threads and forums are considered read. Individual threads are marked as read within a session via cookies.

This option is how all versions of vBulletin before 3.5 functioned.
2. Database (no automatic forum marking) - this option uses the database to store thread and forum read times. This allows accurate read markers to be kept indefinitely. However, in order for a forum to be marked read when all threads are read, the user must view the list of threads for that forum.

This option is more space and processor intensive than inactivity-based marking.
3. Database (automatic forum marking) - this option is the same as a previous option, but forums are automatically marked as read when the last new thread is read.

This is the most usable option for end users, but most processor intensive.

Question 2:

What are most people setting theirs to? I'm assuming it may be different based on the wide variety of hosting situations and size of the board. Our board is small and is for a gaming community. No pruning is done.

stats: Threads: 859, Posts: 6,187, Members: 96, Active Members: 49

My premise w/ this thread is to have make sure the members are catching the Unread posts. Currently using Option 1 right now. So I'm pretty sure ppl are missing unread threads. I'd love to use the markup versiion that is used here on *.ORG, but I'm sure that is not possible.

Thanks for any input on this.

[Lynne]

I was using Option 1 until about 3 days ago on my board and then switched to Option 3. I used to dislike the version here on vb.org, but now I really like it (thus why I changed my site). Option 3 allows me to go into my Admin CP (like when I help users here) and not have all the threads on my site marked as read afterwards. I am having to 'train' my users to Mark Forums Read though. I'm getting a bit of grousing about the change.

[MjrNuT]

Hey Lynne,

Thanks for the speedy reply. Was your change something that was instant on the server? I guess I mean to ask, is changing to Option 3 advised to do it during maybe off peak hours?

I'm not sure I understand what you are talking about in the Admin CP.

As for ed-U-ma-catin the users, this means when a user logs in the first time since the Option change, ALL threads will be marked UnRead. Thus, they need to use the thread tools (e.g., Quick Links > Mark Forums Read) to make a forum Read or ALL forums Read. They would then be "caught" back up.

Thanks again.

[Lynne]

I changed it in the middle of the day and didn't worry about server loads. Of course, if I had seen something immediately happen, I would have switched back, but I just can't imagine why something so intensive would happen.

The Admin CP thing only affects me because I would very often login to my admin cp to help users here and then a few hours later, logon to the main part of my site and miss everything that had changed up to the time since I had logged into my admin cp cuz the inactivity method would have marked all threads read for me. It's probably something that doesn't affect many users at all.

[MjrNuT]

I took the plunge and no issue. Thanks again. And yes, that completly makes sense about the timing you described for being such a dedicated helper in the Admin CP.

Thanks for your help.