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

Yeah, either control panel or just "preferences". You'd be surprised how many mac and window users don't even know about the control panel in windows...

Either way, it's easily modified in the w3t.pm however you want it labeled.

[]/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/] 6 []/w3timages/icons/frown.gif[/]
Screamers

Hey, I'm just glad you've put it in! Any tweaks are easy after you've done all the grunt work. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]

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

granularity in selecting the time frame.
Thanks for being open to the idea.
Rob

I do preferr being able to set the time frame per board/forum (I am always confused). I also do check for the last posting time in my routine so the choosing the last seven days is the last seven days of posts and not just from today back.
I have some boards that are slooow and need to have a longer time frame. This is a very nice addition, but I may tweak it a bit on my boards.
Thanks again for fitting it in!
Rob

Yes, this is the reason I havent upgraded mine to 5.3 yet. I am not to excited about this feature, so since it is here and will stay here I really would like for it to be improved a little. And that is exactly what I want, being able to set the time frame per board.
Also, under the users preferences along with the different time frames to select (where it says "Default aged threads to be displayed:") there should be a "Boards Default Age", so that the different default age we set on these boards take effect if they have chosen "Boards Default Age".

Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com

And see if this is what you are waiting for....
http://64.38.155.225/ppbb/wwwthreads.pl
I have defaults for each board that I set in the w3tvars file and each user can set a preference.
Rob in Houston

would be nice! I would like buttons for
[Check spelling] [Preview Message] [Post Message]
and do away with the check.

Something similar, I guess I can live with the date box selector we have, I just wish that different dates could be selected depending on the board. Some boards might need a year, some might need just 3 days. I hate the idea of shorttening it so much that someone might not see any post. I want to adapt it to the individual boards need.

Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com

The main problem with having a selection for each board is this. You can't stuff it into cookies, because once you have a certain number of forums you'll reach the cookie limitation. I had this problem before when we used to store the last visit time for each board in cookies. The other problem would be storing it in the db. This would require a separate table and then you'd need to do another query when going into that board to grab their preference. Adding more queries is something I try to avoid whenever possible.

I have seen some routines for this where it packs all the cookie info in one blob and stores that? I don't know if there is a size limit there, I bet there is.... Bummer!
Thanks for explaining why!
Rob in Houston

Yes, OK, but I am dont think that really applies to what I want.
First: A predefined age per board would not require a cookie. Because:
Second: I am not asking for the users to be able to set their own default per board. Only the admin defines it. Therefore if at all, it would only require one query either in the db or in a flat file such as w3tvars. It could be in the same table as where the boards name is. Would that be too much load?

If you really want to allow users to change the default Age of posts, as you do have now, I am not suggesting for users to change them by board but them all, that is, if they change the value they will see them all with that age (should be discouraged though) overwrittting the individual boards age settings. Thats why I suggested that if this option is there, there would need to be a "Default age in the board" option, basically so that their own prefference is not chosen. I could perfectly live without this other option.

Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com

If you perform one query (or even two-I don’t have the layout with me) and reduce a query by several hundred records is it worthwhile.

If you have a very busy board, and you consistently read more data than needed, wouldn’t you save resources by limiting the aggregate returned data. Are two smaller reads better than one large one? I would think so, but not always, so I understand your hesitation to move cookie type data into the database and to do excessive reads. Long term though, if you plan to support large boards, it may be a forced tradeoff.

The size limit for a cookie is 4kB according to Netscape's spec:
http://home.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html

Bill Dimm, MagPortal.com - [:red]free feeds for your site.

Sorry Scream, but could you comment on these last posts? []/w3timages/icons/crazy.gif[/][]/w3timages/icons/blush.gif[/][]/w3timages/icons/crazy.gif[/]

Will it really bring up that much the load, especially considering you reduced it so much in 5.3?


Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com

I think I understand what you are asking now, it wouldn't create any extra load by storing the default of a board in the boards table. I guess that is just more fine tuning than what I had thought would be a good start. Honestly, if your forum has moderate traffic if you set the default to show all posts it's not going to make that big of difference. What this is really meant for is for large forums that hammer the SQL server heavily, thats where they have very active forums so setting for only new posts within the last week will still show plenty of new posts for them.

Not saying no it can't be done or that I won't do it. This would just fall into an upgrade when I'm working on the admin section again.

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[/].

And then work the 1,2,3 days off of that. If the board is set for three days and the last post was Mar-15, you would see posts on the 15,14,13. I think that this would be a very nice compromise?

So... it is still not clear to me.
Would it be possible for you to do it, and would you? I mean the more simple thing, just set the default per board in the w3t_Boards table. If I have to chose I rather be the one to have the control over the default age of each board than letting my users do so on an individual basis.

I would hate to set a board like your Information Board where someone visits and sees no post because the setting is not according to the boards needs. It looks really bad. []/w3timages/icons/crazy.gif[/] And if I go opposite ways, setting it to a year, then it means no one really needs to have a view with a smaller age... so it doesnt make sense.

If this can be done I would appreciate it being released before working on the templates (that I guess will take a long development time).



Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com

I can't say for sure one way or the other just yet as I haven't really thought about the actual design portion. Still trying to get everything done for this release so I can't make any promises either way. I think for now the best thing would be is if you have a moderate use board is set the default for a large number. Like I said this feature doesn't do much for a moderate useage forum except for the a user with a slow connection that visits often in that it would allow them to change it to a smaller setting for quicker loading.