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Below is my first attempt at creating a hack. It works perfectly on my board but as no others have tested it, I am putting it here for now. I know there are other latest x posts type hacks around, however, in my day long search of this forum, I have yet to find one that suited my needs. Therefore, I wrote my own. I offer it here. It only uses one query to return information on the last x posts including the fields (forum id, forum title, thread id, thread title, initial poster id, initial poster name, last poster id, last poster name, reply count and views). It takes into account permissions using the CANVIEW and CANVIEWOTHERS constants and properly flags the show variable if no rows are deemed showable. Have fun and please do not hesitate to comment on this. This code is entirely of my own writing although it was visually inspired by the hack in place on http://cosforums.com. Thanks.

[Albus]

Yeah, that's a valid approach. One could take that, and make that static conditions variables in order to make it more easily customized. The great thing about hacks is that there is no 'right' way to do things. Everybody's needs are different. I would like to see what you come up with.

[Smitty]

Originally Posted by Serenarules

Yeah, that's a valid approach. One could take that, and make that static conditions variables in order to make it more easily customized. The great thing about hacks is that there is no 'right' way to do things. Everybody's needs are different. I would like to see what you come up with.

One of the things here is that in todays world, there are very few vB forums which this is a problem for with consideration to the fact that servers are cheap - fast, big servers. I've been online with a site since January 1996 and while I'm not a pro, I've maintained it and and gone from static pages to a relatively active forum. It's a niche forum for quality assurance folks - definitely not like 800 people on at one time. 100 over 30 minutes when it's busy during weekdays.

Typical day:
Date - Unique visitors - Pages - Hits - Bandwidth
25 May 2004 - 3174 - 38485 - 267414 - 1.78 GB

I fought with all sorts of issues until last December when I finally got a dedicated server - and for about $75 less a month than when I had a Verio virtual server. I had to get help setting it up but that was less than US$200. Since then all has been heaven. Not a problem with the database once I got everything straight, response is great and with an 80 gig RAID, I only have 35% of the 80 in use which includes the forum database (I have a lot of other files).

Database Data Disk Usage 93.88 MB
Database Index Disk Usage 34.45 MB
Attachment Disk Usage 220.21 MB
Custom Profile Picture Disk Usage 0.16 MB
Custom Avatar Disk Usage 0.34 MB

My point is, as I have seen myself do, many times we opt for less server than we really need to do what we want to do based upon a financial decision. I do OK profit wise on my site - it well more than pays expenses - so US$175 a month isn't a real big deal.

This is not to say I don't enjoy the code optimization discussion or that I see it as unimportant. In fact, I really appreciate it. It is rare that threads get this much detail and thought. It is a real 'class' for me as you folks are discussing what's going on and I'm better understanding how all this works.

Just a thought because so many times we try to get more out of something than our tools can reasonably handle.

I installed the hack and there is absolutely no server load issue for me. It typically stays below 1. I've never seen it above 1.5 even when Google is attacking it as it does from time to time. I'm on a 10M connection - don't need 100 but I see 100's as more and more common and we all know server rental prices have been dropping for some time.

I also want to say thanks again because this hack really is something I had been wanting for a long time and it fit right in where I wanted it. I took out last poster and thread starter in part because I have a 'sidebar' and I wanted the room, but also because I saw it as another 'complicator' for search bots. I like search bots and don't see those fields as a big deal to users.

Like you say - we each want something different. And sometimes you have to have the proper tool to do the job which, in this 'business' includes software AND server.

[Albus]

It looks nice on your board too.



Curious, did you also adjust the SQL query and php code in regards to the unused fields? That would trim a tad of processing time and data return size, even if just a hair.

[Smitty]

No - I didn't touch the code other than removing the fields in a template and the index.php file (if I remember correctly). I'm not motivated enough to really sit down and try to learn to code php. I took fortran, pl1 and cobol courses back in the early 1970's in college and have played with php, perl, etc a bit over the years - so if I get desparate I can follow what's happening reading through the code and Google when I get stuck. But I'm typically not that motivated. I try everything on my Mac Powerbook and if it works on it I make the change on the live BSD server.

That's in part why I mentioned server size. Is it unnecessary overhead for me? Yes - but not enough to even measure on my server. I used to fight those 'just a hair' battles from back in the days where a local ISP would complain because my WWWBoard scripts were taking up too much server CPU time. Each time I'd switch. Eventually I was at wits end on a Verio 'Virtual Server'. It was nice. 24/7/365 tech support answered within minutes. Fully managed. But only 2.4Gigs and I was sharing a processor and as time went on it got slower and slower. Even backing up the database was an hour plus WITH the forums shut down.

But when I 'over bought' (my 'advisor' said I should rent out some of the space and bandwidth) found my life became much less complicated. It's just me, I have plenty of processing power and plenty of disk space. I no longer fight 'just a hair would help' battles and my life has become remarkably uncomplicated.

Now, had the hack stopped working I would have put the fields back in and come here and asked 'how to'. I really wanted the truncated lenght at about 45. Lazy me - it worked and I'm happy. The 'regulars' use the do=getdaily for the last 24 hours of posts - they get the 'details' there so I don't see a 'user experience' problem.

[Smitty]

BTW - This is, obviously, why I appreciate folks like you who contribute code here for people like me who aren't very 'savvy'. I know just enough to be dangerous, as the saying goes.

My site is relatively plain and uninspired, but web sites are not my forte. I just play with my site. You wouldn't believe what it was like back when I went online in 1996 - landing page was a starfield (as were many, many landing pages in those days). It was really gaudy. I'm sure not an artist or page layout person. Your site page layout and artwork blew me away. Serious time and effort along with artistic talent.

[Erwin]

Originally Posted by Smitty

My point is, as I have seen myself do, many times we opt for less server than we really need to do what we want to do based upon a financial decision. I do OK profit wise on my site - it well more than pays expenses - so US$175 a month isn't a real big deal...

I installed the hack and there is absolutely no server load issue for me. It typically stays below 1. I've never seen it above 1.5 even when Google is attacking it as it does from time to time. I'm on a 10M connection - don't need 100 but I see 100's as more and more common and we all know server rental prices have been dropping for some time...

Like you say - we each want something different. And sometimes you have to have the proper tool to do the job which, in this 'business' includes software AND server.

If you install this hack, and you don't get server problems, then you don't have a very large forum. This hack scans the whole thread table - how many threads does your forum have? It's not about your hardware, it's about the size of your database - with this hack, specifically the size of your thread table.

[red_baron2000]

is there a way to exclude some forums from beeing scaned and listed?
thank you

[Albus]

Originally Posted by red_baron2000

is there a way to exclude some forums from beeing scaned and listed?
thank you

This is an older version. Please see the following thread, in which a similar question was posted, and answered.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=78805