UBB.Developers Forums General Discussion Suggestions and Feedback New "Show Threads" Option

Scream,

I just wanted to drop you a line... I LOVE this new option! It could be a huge factor with helping speed thing up! My only question is... can you center the option rather than lave it left justified - or do you plan to add a couple more goodies to the same line? Such as a search this forum option. <hint, hint>

Show Threads : [..................]                         Search This Forum: [..................]

Jhariden (aka Strategist)
Stratics Forums

Yes!!!!!! This is brilliant. How soon can we have it? I want it NOW. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]

[]http://www.wopr.com/w3tuserpics/Eileen-sig.gif[/]

awwwwll yeah, that looks good....

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DITTO!!!

Muhammad Chishti
Creative dIRECTOR
[:white]http://www.imcuniverse.com

Hmm, how about a display preference letting you set a default other than... what is it, 2 weeks?

Muhammad Chishti
Creative dIRECTOR
[:white]http://www.imcuniverse.com

*waves to Jhariden*

Ian

Ethos - Project Coordinator
StraticsCom, Inc.
http://www.stratics.com

Have you looked at your Profile?
I'd like a "12 hours" option - for people who visit busy boards a couple of times a day.

[]http://www.wopr.com/w3tuserpics/Eileen-sig.gif[/]

Yeah, I looked and didn't see anything... yesterday. I'll go check again. []/w3timages/icons/blush.gif[/] []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/] Yep, there it is!

Muhammad Chishti
Creative dIRECTOR
[:white]http://www.imcuniverse.com

Edited by Muhammad on 03/17/01 09:18 AM (server time).

You know, this would be really great if it could be done on a forum-wide or category-wide basis...

Muhammad Chishti
Creative dIRECTOR
[:white]http://www.imcuniverse.com

I hadn't thought about adding anything more to that area, but that might help even the whole thing out. I'll put that in before I put out 5.3.

On second thought, maybe the Search this forum should wait until the user improvements are worked on. I can add it now fairly easily but not quite sure how everyone wants this to work. Should it be an "AND" search or an "OR" search. Should it include "Usernames", etc. So, maybe I'll just center the Show Threads portion for now until everyone gets some time to think about how this should work.

It should be a standard "Entire Phrase" search with "All Posts" for the time line I believe. If they wish to search in more detail or with different params they can always visit the standard search page.

Jhariden (aka Strategist)
Stratics Forums

Ok, I'll throw it in and see what everyone thinks. Thanks for the quick reply.

Yes, I agree on that.

[]http://www.wopr.com/w3tuserpics/Eileen-sig.gif[/]

Yeah, that sounds good... (entire phrase)

Muhammad Chishti
Creative dIRECTOR
[:white]http://www.imcuniverse.com

Awesome, thanks Scream!! :)

Jhariden (aka Strategist)
Stratics Forums

You added it!!!! w00t!

It's PERFECT. Exactly what I was thinking of. I just tested it out and it works great. Thanks again Scream!

Jhariden (aka Strategist)
Stratics Forums

Hum... I am afraid I dont like it. []/w3timages/icons/crazy.gif[/]
It just seems like junk to me:
-In postlist who really needs to view the "active threads" from this last week or so? They are already ordered right there in front of you... come on... they even have dates... they will even have the colored icon if they have unread posts... this option just takes space and is worthless, sorry, I dont like it.

-The search forum option is more interesting... but that is not its place. Put it below, at the bottom, to the left or to the right of the Go To board jump box... it makes much more sense there. Besides, you want content on the top, not one hundred options before you get to what you are really there for. It almost seems like we assume they must be at the wrong page so we give them lots of options of going elsewhere before showing them the threads... no, it should be at the bottom, next to the jump to box.


If we really feel the urge to add forms up to the top for people to fill in they are not these forms. I would like to see a log-in form for visitors so they can easily log in... some of you already have this, I like it, it makes sense. But not this.

Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com

Actually Mateo, the Active threads one is much more than just junk. When you bring up a forum that has several thousand threads in it the script has to count all of the threads to do the proper paging, and even though it uses a limit and with proper indexing it still does a full table read. By throwing in a date into that query it only grabs entries from the database that are newer than the specified date. This has the benefit of being a very large improvement for large forums. Several seconds can be taken of a query on even moderate sized forums.

The search forum one helps balance out that area as well[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/].

Hum... I see what you say... well... partially, I think I am missing something (this week I havent been able to really follow all threads and I guess I somewhat missed on this).

So when you speak about bringing up a forum that has several thousand threads .... I gues you are speaking of postlist.pl/.php, right? So, isnt it doing it anyway when you go to postlist? I mean... giving this option once it has just been done anyway doesnt save me that much time... maybe I would have to be a user at a board where there are at least 400 new posts a day... I dont know... maybe there is something I still dont see. []/w3timages/icons/crazy.gif[/]

It just seems to me that it would not really add to a better user experience to have this option (active threads...) at my forum, and at just about any forum with less than 50 posts per day. I dont think I would use it here as well (and its more active than my forum)...

Any possibility it could be an option? If not dont worry, I know how to comment it out []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/].

Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com

Nice one. And it adds symetry! []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]

[]http://www.wopr.com/w3tuserpics/Eileen-sig.gif[/]

Oh, now that's a point - it already reads the whole thing - *before* you use the option (supposing you haven't pre-set it low in your Profile). Maybe it should write back to the User table - become a toggle. That way only the first board you entered would do the pre-set read and once you'd changed it, they would all do it the new way - until you changed it again.

[]http://www.wopr.com/w3tuserpics/Eileen-sig.gif[/]

I'm not quite sure I'm following your thoughts, or that you are following mine[]/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]. It's not necessarily an end user enhancement. It's basically a database enhancement. Yes, I am speaking of postlist.pl/php. Before this was added, every call to postlist had to query the database for all threads in that forum. For example, this forum here. There are 307 threads. So, every time you bring up the post listing screen for this thread it counts all 307 threads and does calculations on those numbers. By adding the active threads toggle, it only grabs a portion of them.

I guess it's kind of hard to explain. If you want all threads to be shown then you can set the default to show all. And it will behave just like you are used to. But for those that are concerned about speed issues on the server it really is beneficial to set this to something lower as the SQL server has much less to process.

Ok, now I'm lost[]/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/]. Maybe it's late, but I don't quite understand this. The default setting comes from the config file, and I have it set to the past 7 days for here. So, it's not reading the whole thing now, only threads active within the past 7 days. Once you edit your profile it goes by your setting in your profile, where I have mine set for the past 2 days (much quicker to load on my lowly 28.8 modem). Users that have not logged in, or that have not edited their profile will get the setting from the config file.

Or maybe I just totally missed what you were talking about, which very well could be[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/].

Ok. Suppose you have you Profile set to 7 days. You come in and when you go to the first board you realise you were here yesterday so you only need to see 1 days posts. So you use the new option box at the top of the page and change it to 1. Fine. But when you go to look at the next board it load 7 days again from the default setting. So you have to use the option at the top of the page again to set it to 1 again. And so one... every time you go to a new board it's back to the default 7 again.

What I'm suggesting is that when you change it in postlist, your new selection becomes the new default. So that now every time you open a new board it shows 1 days posts.

[]http://www.wopr.com/w3tuserpics/Eileen-sig.gif[/]

I see now... I see... I hadnt noticed that postlist has been changed already in the default view to not show older posts... that is, that they are already filtered.

OK, so if this is to be a standard I think we should start out with some re-wording. Instead of saying "Show threads [active in...]" it should say something like "Now showing threads [active in...].

Secondly, I see a big problem with this on some boards. For example, I have some boards that get posts every day. But some boards are not that popular... and there will be times this filter will show no posts. That is trouble, it should never happen. Solutions? I would suggest either:
-Different default "Show threads active..." values for every board to adapt them to what is needed for them. For example, in www.wwwthreads.com you would set less popular boards to maybe a month or so, such as the "Web Hosting" board, and boards like this General Feedback one to a week, as is. Otherwise when you go to a less popular board the forum looks like it is totally new and not worth posting... you know... "nobody posts here!" I assume most people would not search for older posts, people take the defaults, what you give them.
-Or maybe better yet... Make sure that no matter if it is checking for active threads one month old or just one week there are always X number of threads displayed. That is, if in the default setting as of now (one week) the board only has 3 threads, get next 17 threads so that there are 20 threads... even if they are older.

As for Eileens suggestion about making the filtered dates default to the last you indicated... the problem with it is that most people are not really computer sabby, you have to keep things as simple as possible for them and I am afraid that could result in doing for example on testing a search for posts one day old and when further going through boards wonder why there are so few posts when they are actually filtered by just one day or so. The thing is that we have to assume how users are not that "smart" and sometimes you need to sacrifice features that would be cool for us who spend hours here for easier navigation of the newbies.

Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com

Ah I understand what you are saying now. But that might make things a bit more confusing while it should stay very simple. If you have it set to only show active threads in the past 7 days, you will still see what threads are new within the past day because they are marked as new, so there is no reason to change it to only the past day.

Really, the only reason this is here is to cut down on the mysql load. If someone visits a forum once a week, then they would probably set this to active in the past 7 days. If you visit daily, then the past day or 2 would be fine. There isn't much need to be changing it all of the time.

The problem with the second option of always displaying X number of posts, is now you would have to do 2 queries if there are none displayed. First, you would need to do the normal query, then if none are displayed you would need to alter the query to grab more posts. This would defeat the purpose of this option in the first place[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/].

The first one, having an option for each board would be possible but that would probably end up needing to be in another table, because there would need to be an entry for each user, per board. Which again means there would need to be another query to grab your preferences for that particular board since it couldn't be grabbed during the authenticate query.

It shouldn't be this hard. Basically, if you don't get much traffic on some of your boards you can set the default to show for the past year or something like that. This way, new users will always see some posts.

In that case I see no point in having the option box in postlist at all! We should simply remind them of the current state: "Showing threads from the past n days". We could make this a link to editdisplay so it's easy to change (globally) if they want.

[]http://www.wopr.com/w3tuserpics/Eileen-sig.gif[/]

But that's is going to end up being a pain that way. For example, I have mine set for the past 2 days right now. But, say I want to go in and read a bunch of older threads on the Feedback forum. Instead of being able to change it right there, I'd have to go in and edit my profile and make the change, then go back to the feedback forum. And since I still want my default to be 2 days, when I'm done, then I have to go back in and re-edit my profile to set it back to 2 days.

The option is there so you can make a one time change for that forum without affecting your default.

Hum... how about displaying a text saying "Only displaying active posts from the last X days. To view list of all threads click here.

So people would always go through the default X numbers as set by the admin or by their user prefference (mainly default as most users never change options). So yes, you would still make the full table read at times, but only when someone clicks on the link... and this would be around 1% of the times, I assume.

How about that?

Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com

En respuesta a:

---

It shouldn't be this hard. Basically, if you don't get much traffic on some of your boards you can set the default to show for the past year or something like that. This way, new users will always see some posts.

---

Yes, but if you do this the active threads form is quite useless (sorry for the word)... like there is no real sense for it on these type of boards. I would much rather delete posts older than 1 year than have this form up there.

Another reason I dont like the form is because it just makes the page look too full. Too many options for the average user. If we are to have it I think the above suggestion with a text stating info on it and a link to View All threads would be the best... doing this I would then move the search box to the bottom left of the Jump to box.

Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com

One reason (IMO) for keeping it like Scream did it is that UBB (and every board that I know does this) uses basically the same approach, so when I saw this it looked familiar, "logic" and easy to manage... I guess a lot of people will feel the same....

Every board you know does this?! Weird, I had seen this some other times but never got the impression that most did so! []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]
Even then, just because others do so is no reason to not try to find a better way of doing so. WWWThreads has been quite unique not copying other boards... just checked right now and guess what, it is rated number one in HotScripts Perl, and it has been there these last weeks (among first 4 positions!)... If w3t just starts copying other boards it can be just any of those boards you go to. Dont get me wrong, I think there are great features in other boards that can be implemented here, but this is a leading software, wwwthreads pretty much leads the way for others, not the other way around. And I think it is fine to add this feature, it makes sense for those of you who have 50.000 posts or so... But hey, I think we shouldnt just copy, we should give it more thought, what makes it easier for the user to understand, for the user to use, and if we come up with a new method that is more simple why not use it? Just because others arent?

So with this feature we are debating I do see it quite useful, its just that I am not sure I agree on the method used to use this feature. Lets get into the users mind, and by the "users mind" I dont mean our mind, the administrators mind (even if we are users), I mean the average user. Believe it or not, yesterday I watched someone in his computer at my boards, he has been a regular these last two months, replying and all. But yesterday was the first time he wanted to post a new thread, and I just happened to be there watching. He did not know how to start it. You have that "Post" button that I never thought wouldnt make sense to someone... he finally clicked on it, hit the browsers back button, back and forth for a while, started asking out loud, even left the room to ask someone elsewhere just to make sure he was starting the new thread as he was seeing it seemed like if it was the same form as for when he replies... it was confusing to him! What a surprise for me! I still cant believe it, but have we been able to watch our users at the boards? The point I am trying to make is that we need it as simple and as best explained as possible. The way it is now it was confusing for me on my first visit for a while till Scream explained it some more... what about my users then if even I got confused!

OK... so back again to this debated feature... as a user if it is set to a week or a month and I dont see the posts I am looking for, and by any chance I do happen to notice this option to show more active threads I would try to get them all. For most visits and on most people the server load is already greatly reduced by, say, setting the default active threads to one week. Time is already saved, 99% of the users will never change this, believe me. So I dont care if 1% of them request a full table (all dates) postlist as it has been till now, its no big deal, its just 1% of the users, just a few that really want to see more, let them see them all with no need to choose a bunch of other options.

So yes, if you all want this as it is now I guess I will live with it. Its just that I feel there is way for improvement. Sometimes improvement is not meassured by the many options but by how easy and intuitive it is to use it. I also feel it is too cluttered up there, too many things taking space, but hey... if you all want it I can live with it. Just visited ubb as you mentioned and it doesnt seem this cluttered, I guess because we also have the search box there. I still believe that search box should be at the bottom next to the "Jump to box", but hey... you know... I will live with it if you all want it there.

Uff! What a long post! Sorry for that! []/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/]

Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com

You know I've never gone out to just copy other features, and I'm not gonna start any time soon[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]. The actual idea came from rgranger. He actually did the the database testing on the performance increase by adding a timestamp to the query, and he setup his forums to allow this to be toggled and saved it in a cookie. I don't like to put too much into cookies as you run into limitations so I put it into the user profile. So, don't worry about copying. I still get all of my ideas from you guys.

So, with that. Remember, this is a new feature. GIve it some time, and more people may come up with their own ideas on how it works or how to make it work better.

I don't buy your arguement. Now that you've released it fixed this way, I'll probably just hack it to update the Profile the way I want.

[]http://www.wopr.com/w3tuserpics/Eileen-sig.gif[/]

Hey, Scream... hope you did not get the impression I was accusing you of starting to copy other boards features, not the case. I know you never (or at least you claim so, hahah) go to other boards so all improvements rely on our requests and feedback. Sometimes that has been frustrating for me and others who wished a feature that we had seen elsewhere, but that is also the reason w3t is so unique. My point was to reply to the need of doing it the same way as others just because others do it that way and people will find it familiar. I see that makes much sense, but I also believe we should always search for a new way of doing it that could be better. I think you will agree with me on this. And hey... if you all preffer this way of displaying this speed enhancer it will be ok with me. If I have time maybe I will try to come up with a hacked version just to get all your user input after visually seeing what I mean. []/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/]

By the way... what comes now for next upgrade? Site integration? User interface? admin?

Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com

Well, we all know that you are the hacking queen Eileen[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]. Different sites may want this to work different ways. As you know by now features have changed over the course of time, so this one may change as well as more people comment on it.

I understood what you were trying to say MTO[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/].

As for what is coming next. I think we need to work on some stuff for the end user, so I'm thinking of working on the combined area for sending private messages, favorite threads, checking private messages, editing prefs, etc. At last check everyone thought that this should be called the "Control Panel". Which would take the place of "Edit Profile, Send Private and Check Private" in the navigation menu. Does "Control Panel" still sound good to everyone?

ya it means place for preferences for everyone, windows/mac.

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