1 Topic by Lynx

  • Lynx
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  • Registered: 2004-12-17
  • Posts: 6

Topic: Understanding How this Board Works

I notice it is very zippy.  I have a strip down phpBB.

What I feel is essential is some way to know which are new posts and which new posts you have viewed (some sort of session management).  My phpbb navagation links at the bottom of a thread go to the next unread post and one is able to link directly to a post.

Not sure if there are private forums and how deleting posts or threads would be handled -- thread management  (guess I have to download a test board).

Am I right in my initial impression that there is no way to know which posts are new without remembering when you left and reading the last post time?  And if there are posts made while you are on the board, you may not realize it?

2 Reply by Lynx

  • Lynx
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  • Posts: 6

Re: Understanding How this Board Works

By the way, I like the fact that y ou don't fool with a post title.  I stripped that from my board.  I also stripped out the member list, all smilies, and even the sigs, as they were being misused.

3 Reply by ShawnBrown (edited by ShawnBrown 2004-12-17 18:49)

  • From: Washington, DC
  • Registered: 2004-09-23
  • Posts: 113

Re: Understanding How this Board Works

I'm going to make a JavaScript add-on that manages this for PunBB 1.2. It will be a something that people can add to PunBB's main template if they like. I should be able to start on it after Dec. 20th. Other people have discussed similar ideas under the New message indicators topic.

Latest Open Source project: [img=Templar PHP]http://code.google.com/p/templarphp/logo?logo_id=1251758459[/img]

TemplarPHP - A cascading template framework for PHP.

ShawnBrown's Website

4 Reply by Lynx

  • Lynx
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  • Posts: 6

Re: Understanding How this Board Works

By the way, I didn't realize there were indicators that a post was unread.  I guess I had to be gone for a while before they showed up.

Is there a navagation button on this page to go to the next newest or next oldest thread?

  • From: 127.0.0.1
  • Registered: 2001-11-02
  • Posts: 9,167

Re: Understanding How this Board Works

PunBB keeps track of which posts are new since you last visit, but it does not turn off an indicator once you read the topic. Personally, I really don't mind this as I use "Show new posts since last visit" all the time, but I've gotten quite a few requests for more fine-grained post indicators.

Regarding the navigation button, no.

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

Rickard's Website

6 Reply by XuMiX

  • XuMiX
  • Senior Member
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  • From: Russia.Novosibirsk.ToStreet()
  • Registered: 2004-05-17
  • Posts: 130

Re: Understanding How this Board Works

2 Lynx: try this http://punbb.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=5297
maybe its not the prettiest solution, but it works however smile

XuMiX's Website

7 Reply by Lynx (edited by Lynx 2004-12-18 15:41)

  • Lynx
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  • Registered: 2004-12-17
  • Posts: 6

Re: Understanding How this Board Works

A couple small suggestions to combine with the "show new posts since last visit" page:

It would be useful to have a "visited link" color that  distinguished the threads you'd clicked on from those you hadn't clicked on so you know what you had already looked at.  Also, at the bottom of a thread (after you've already read everything), a nice little "back" button to the lower right might get you back to your navagation new posts page more quickly.

My database is somewhat large at this point, maybe 300mb.  I chopped off 100mb by deleting the top 300 most common words from the search tables (the version I was using I never caught the error until recently).  I haven't installed a test version of this board but am interested in finding out how you've structured the search table.  I hope it still works well as it gets larger. 

By the way, the hacks I love for phpbb that I'm thinking may use too many resources are navagation hacks at the bottom of the page that go to the next unread message, somewhat like your new posts since last visit page but on the thread itself.

  • Connorhd
  • Connorhd
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  • From: Leeds, UK
  • Registered: 2004-06-13
  • Posts: 4,195

Re: Understanding How this Board Works

you can't have a visited link as the forum doesn't record which posts you've been on at least not unless ShawnBrown gets this funky java thing to work.

as for the searching i think punbb is very similar to phpbb in how it organises search words

FluxBB.
Connorhd.co.uk.

Connorhd's Website

  • Frank H
  • Former PunBB Developer
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  • Registered: 2003-03-16
  • Posts: 1,423

Re: Understanding How this Board Works

search function in PunBB use stopwords aswell for the search, so you can decide what shouldn't go into the search database...