The main reason I always try to limit the number of SQL queries is because many of the users that use the forums are on shared servers where the mysql server is set to only allow a certain number of connections.
Like I was saying to MTO. A large forum means heavy traffic with alot of posts, so they could set the default to a week for all the boards and it will still show plenty of posts.
MTO's suggestion of having a default board setting per board in the w3t_Boards table would work, however as soon as the user changed their preference these settings would be overwritten.
The main reason I don't want to add the settings to the cookie is just problems. Different browsers handle cookies differently and when I was storing more info in the cookie it caused a variety of errors. Logging users out, losing read messages etc. because once you reach the max cookie size or the max cookies per domain it just deletes the oldest cookie. Finally got this problem wiped out and I don't really want to tangle with it again[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/].
