The #1 thing that keeps most users compulsively coming back to your site is to check and see if they've been replied to. The Pavlovian hook of "You've Got Mail!" was one of the keys to AOL's success. Users LOVE stuff waiting for them.

Presently there's no way to view all unread replies, aside from the emailed reply function (and emailed replies may work well for some sites, but, for a community site like mine, they spoil the magnetic attraction of surfing in to CHECK for replies!).

If new replies could somehow be listed on "My Home", that would be so awesome. It'd be a veritable tractor beam to users.


JIM

For sure... this and all new posts since last login, would be fantastic.

Yes, it would be nice if there was a feature for telling you all new replies since last login, as long as it is not displayed in the format of the "view recent messeges...Past 24 Hours" thing.

That was a very promissing feature, but the way it is displayed, post by post, unordered by boards, and so on... has made it become one of the least used features. If used at all.

Some of my users use the "view recent messages" function but I like to believe that most people don't use it because they want to see post in their context. At least that's what I want. =]

But if the recent posts where listed per board it might work better. With a new header for each board and sorted by date within that section. Don't know if it'll look good though, since the list is shown XX posts at a time.

But, staying on topic, the replies-function would be highly appreciated by many of my users. Having to put all interesting topics in the favorite list is not really working since the list becomes very long and is a bit tedious to keep updated.

Maybe all of these different ways to view threads could be collected in a thread viewing function box. Then the user only needs to click the way they want to show posts, maybe they want to see all threads they have made replies to first and click on that function. Then they want to see all new posts since XX and click on that function. After that they might want to show posts from all users that are logged in, or something. Don't know where to put this box though...

Agreed re: the unformatted chaos of "view recent".

We're working on a javascript hack to accomplish exactly what Gardener is talking about. To have a look (presently using a different message board system), you can try the HotPost feature at my site. There's no direct URL in, but if you go to http://www.chowhound.com/main.html you'll see the HotPost link atop that page.

The other thing that's inexplicable to me about "view recent messages" is those arbitrary choices of 24 hrs., 48 hrs, 7 days. No reason the age can't/shouldn't be user configurable. HotPost allows user configurable date, but we'll add hours once we tweak it for ubbthreads.