Number of posts in thread since last visited

[Vociferous]

I have been browsing the various hacks available for VB 2.x and I do not see one which would do the following:

In a seperate table (preferably next to how many posts are in a thread) would be a count for how many new posts are in the thread since it was last visited.

This would require a thread to be marked as read after visiting it and not only after clicking the link that says "Mark all Forums Read".

Is there a hack out there that already does this that I missed?

If there isn't-- could we do it?

Thanks!

[Vociferous]

~bump~

updated my profile with my customer id #
maybe I'll get a response now.

[tubedogg]

Actually it'd be a lot easier and a lot more feasible than the way you suggested. Just count the number of posts in each thread that are new since the person's last visit in forumdisplay.php

[Vociferous]

I hadn't thought about that and it seems like that would do the trick for a slower forum-- I'd like to see it.

The reason I descibed it the way I did is I'm looking at moving an extremely active (5,000+ new posts/replys every month) WebX community over to VB. They can see with each refresh of the thread-listing's page how many new posts are on each thread since they last openned them (even if it's only been 30 seconds).
I'd like to not alienate anyone from the boards simply because they don't like the change.
It'd be easier if people accepted change as easily as myself-- but most people don't and there-in lies my problem.

What I'm looking at doing is creating a carbon copy of the current WebX layout (at least on the surface) with VB in order to allow the members to make a smooth transfer over to the new boards with a minimum amount of problems.

Basically, if it looks the same, works the same, they'll think it is the same-- even though it isn't the same.

Am I making sense?

And if anyone wonders why I'm moving to VB over WebX-- it's because WebX is overpriced, underpowered, and is more of a bandwidth hog than UBB.

[tubedogg]

Either method would be OK for a smaller forum. However the method you suggest would be an absolute server-killer for a decent sized forum because of the amount of data involved in marking each thread read, as has been discussed here elsewhere before.

Anyway this sounded interesting so I whipped up something for my forums. Code changes are below - it's actually quite simple.

In forumdisplay.php find

PHP Code:

$threadids='thread.threadid IN (0'.$stickyids; 


Replace it with

PHP Code:

$threadids='threadid IN (0'.$stickyids; 


Find

PHP Code:

  // check to see if there are any threads to display. If there are, do so, otherwise, show message 


Right below it add

PHP Code:

$posts = $DB_site->query("SELECT COUNT(*) AS posts,threadid FROM post WHERE $threadids AND dateline>$bbuserinfo[lastvisit] GROUP BY threadid");
while ($post = $DB_site->fetch_array($posts)) {
    $newpost[$post[threadid]] = $post[posts];
} 


Find

PHP Code:

      if (($bbuserinfo[maxposts] != -1) and ($bbuserinfo[maxposts] != 0)) 


Right above it add

PHP Code:

      if ($newpost[$thread[threadid]]) {
        $newposts = $newpost[$thread[threadid]];
        eval("\$numnew = \"".gettemplate('forumdisplaybit_newposts')."\";");
      } else {
        $newposts = " ";
        eval("\$numnew = \"".gettemplate('forumdisplaybit_newposts')."\";");
      } 


And then you need to add a template named forumdisplaybit_newposts with the following contents:

($newposts new post(s))

And then edit the forumdisplay_threadslist template...
Find

	<td bgcolor="{tableheadbgcolor}" nowrap><smallfont><a href="$sorturl&sortorder=desc&sortfield=replycount"><font color="{tableheadtextcolor}"><b>Replies</b></font></a> $sortarrow[replycount]</smallfont></td>

Right below it add

	<td bgcolor="{tableheadbgcolor}" nowrap><smallfont><font color="{tableheadtextcolor}"><b>New Posts</b></font></smallfont></td>

Then find

	<td bgcolor="{tableheadbgcolor}" width="100%" colspan="8" align="center"><smallfont color="{tableheadtextcolor}">

and change the "8" to "9".
Then in the forumdisplaybit template find

	<td bgcolor="$fbackcolor"><normalfont>$thread[views]</normalfont></td>

and right *above* it add

	<td bgcolor="$fbackcolor"><normalfont>$numnew</normalfont></td>

And that's it.

[Vociferous]

Indeed.

The servers running WebX now are extremely over-taxed and we have to auto-prune old threads after only a few days of their becoming idle. I was hoping VB could prove more adept at helping the servers handle such stresses.

I appreciate your work so far though!
I'm adding your code modifications as we speak so I can test it out.

Any other ideas that might accomplish the same thing? Or should it even be considered? :\

[tubedogg]

Originally posted by Vociferous
The servers running WebX now are extremely over-taxed and we have to auto-prune old threads after only a few days of their becoming idle. I was hoping VB could prove more adept at helping the servers handle such stresses.

Oh, we definitely can. However that kind of thing would kill any message board system with enough stress. I don't know the method WebX uses for it, nor do I have any idea what WebX even uses as far as software, but for vB's MySQL database it would be far too much data to handle.

[Vociferous]

Well currently the entire system has roughly 108,000 posts on it.

I'm looking at a single forum at the moment which is a mere 10-20% of that with VB if possible just to do stress tests.

i can't finmd teh final bit in my forumdisplay template

any ideas why????

[amykhar]

soceris,
I don't advise trying this hack. It was giving me errors both times I tried to install it. I haven't had time to try to debug it.

Amy