Mini Mods - Subscribed Threads in Notifications

As seen on www.pentaxforums.com/forums/ , I'm bringing you a handy mod that adds the number of new subscribed threads to the notifications area, as well as a link to subscription.php. This means that whenever someone replies to one of your subscribed threads, you don't have to check your user cp or your e-mail inbox- just click on the notification! Notifications can also be reset via the User CP (memcached version only*).

This mod is provided free of charge, but I ask that the copyright and contact information be retained within the SOURCE. There are no visible copyrights for this mod. Furthermore, I ask that you do not re-use this code without my permission.

Non-Memcached Version:
Time to install: <1 minute (upload 1 product file)
Current Version: 1.1.0
Queries: 1 per pageload for logged in users
Templates: 0
New Phrases: 1
Compatibility: vB 3.7.x-4.x

Love this mod? Support further projects by donating: http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/donations/

Enjoy and don't forget to mark this as installed if you decide to use it! Limited support will be offered to those who click install.

Note to owners of large forums: I also offer a version of this mod that does not add any global queries and instead utilizes memcached. I can install this premium version on your site for an hourly charge, assuming your server already has memcached installed. Send me a PM for details.

[MoMan]

If it's global, then the phrase should be displaying properly.

[jscieza]

When you get a bit of free time, could you please please please make a xCache compatible version?

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[MoMan]

If I ever do get it installed on my server, I'll consider it. As I said earlier, it shouldn't be hard at all.

I've also developed an improved version of this mod for my purposes which uses an added database table instead of memcached to store read marking times. This is much more stable, and if I get time, I'll release it here as well.

[Alfa1]

Thanks. I'll wait on that then.

[jscieza]

Instead of making use of Memcache specific code why don't you simply make use of vBulletin cache, and if your vB uses xCache/Memcache/etc., then the hack will get advantage of this? Also if you go in this way you will not need two versions of your mod anymore as because if your vB doesn't make use of any cache then nothing will be cached.

Take in account that caching in memory is faster than storing the information on the database and both ways are stable.

My two cents

[MoMan]

Is there any documentation on that? I'll gladly tweak the public version of this mod to use the vBulletin interface if such an interface is available.

On my forum, I don't use vB_Datastore_Memcached as the database is actually faster for simple select queries from the datastore than memcached. I use memcached for mods whose queries take > 0.1s, such as iTrader, LXT, latest threads on forum home, and vBulletin's showgroups page, and the database for mods which spit out information that rarely or never changes. I'd still need two versions of the plugin

[jscieza]

Will be any noticeable performance impact if we use the non-cache enabled version in a busy forum? Let's say, 250 members and 2,250 guests at the same time with a cookie timeout of 30 minutes.

Thank you,
Jonathan

[MoMan]

Probably not, as it doesn't add any queries for guests. It depends on whether or not mysql is the bottleneck on your site.

The queries in this mod are relatively light unless a user has hundreds of subscribed threads. It shouldn't add much load, but does add 1 query for all users, and 2 additional queries for users with subscribed threads. On my forum, the non-cached version of this mod added just under 0.01s to the generation time of each page. The memcached version, on the other had, doesn't add anything at all, since most of the time, the queries aren't run.

[jscieza]

Hello,

Thanks for clearing things up.

I went ahead and installed the NOMEMCACHED version of your mod and it appears not to be working at all. There are two problems:

1. There is no phrase for the notification but in usercp.php or subscription.php. Same problem reported by another user here. I don't know if phrase new_subscribed_threads is declared as global or not. Demo: http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/609/nophrase.jpg
2. I'm not getting notifications when there are new replies to a subscribed thread.

I'm running vBulletin 3.8.5. Could you please check this?

EDIT: tested on another forum running vBulletin 3.8.1, same issues.

Thank you,
Jonathan

[MoMan]

Originally Posted by jscieza

Hello,

Thanks for clearing things up.

I went ahead and installed the NOMEMCACHED version of your mod and it appears not to be working at all. There are two problems:

1. There is no phrase for the notification but in usercp.php or subscription.php. Same problem reported by another user here. I don't know if phrase new_subscribed_threads is declared as global or not. Demo: http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/609/nophrase.jpg
2. I'm not getting notifications when there are new replies to a subscribed thread.

I'm running vBulletin 3.8.5. Could you please check this?

EDIT: tested on another forum running vBulletin 3.8.1, same issues.

Thank you,
Jonathan

You should probably add this to init_startup:

$phrasegroups[] = 'user';

OR add a new custom global phrase for the product with the correct key.

This will be included in the next version of the hack.

So you're getting notifications for new threads, but not for threads with replies? That shouldn't be the case. Let me try checking if there are any problems with the code in the simple version.