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Perhaps most people don't know where to start to help us. The only thing that has to be done is to install punbb, the subforums and mark forums as read mod. The problem is that someone needs to help us with creating a query that reads out if there are new posts in the subforums so it can be displayed on the index.php page.

I looked up that part of the code and I now understand what it tries to do.

$sfdb[$sfcount][0] = $current['parent_forum_id'];
$sfdb[$sfcount][5] = $current['last_post'];

And the relevant part of the code:

if ($cur_forum['fid'] == $sub_forums[0] && !$pun_user['is_guest'] && $sub_forums[5] > $pun_user['last_visit'])

So if the current forum id is the same as the parent forum id (forum categories can have parent forums if they are subforums), the user isn't a guest and the last post of the subforums is greater than the post from the last post of the category itself it will display a new post icon.

Edit:

If I change it to:

if ($cur_forum['fid'] == $sub_forums[0] && !$pun_user['is_guest'] && forum_is_new($cur_forum['fid'], $cur_forum['last_post']))

It tries to find out if you've already read the last posts in the parent forum. This way the only thing that needs to be added is a check for the subforums (so it's partly working now).

So now the question...how do I get the info from the subforums to see if the posts are read? I know there is a while with "$cur_subforum = $db->fetch_assoc($subforum_result)" in it. The query for $subforum_result is:

$subforum_result = $db->query('SELECT f.forum_desc, f.forum_name, f.id, f.last_post, f.last_post_id, f.last_poster, f.moderators, f.num_posts, f.num_topics, f.redirect_url, p.poster_id AS last_poster_id FROM '.$db->prefix.'forums AS f LEFT JOIN '.$db->prefix.'posts AS p ON (p.id=f.last_post_id) WHERE parent_forum_id='.$id.' ORDER BY disp_position') or error('Unable to fetch sub forum info',__FILE__,__LINE__,$db->error());

Edit2:

Also a thing to remember is that the forum categories that are subforums are just normal categories that are hidden and are linked to a parent forum. It would be nice if someone could help to create a query that checks if the subforums from a parent forum have posts that are read.

I was able to find the part of the code in the index.php file that causes the bug:

foreach ($sfdb as $sub_forums)

                {

                    if ($cur_forum['fid'] == $sub_forums[0] && !$pun_user['is_guest'] && $sub_forums[5] > $pun_user['last_visit'])

                    {

                        $item_status = 'inew';

                        $icon_text = $lang_common['New icon'];

                        $icon_type = 'icon inew';

I don't know yet what the 0 and the 5 mean in this part of the code.

Edit:

This is the function that checks if all posts are read:

function forum_is_new($forum_id, $last_post_time) { // this function scares me but I believe all the logic is good.  Have fun :)
    
    global $pun_user, $new_topics;
    
    // first we try to do this the easy way.  
    if ($pun_user['last_visit'] >= $last_post_time) { // were there no posts since the user's last visit?
        return false;
    } else if (!empty($pun_user['read_topics']['f'][$forum_id]) &&    // has the user marked all topics in 
        $pun_user['read_topics']['f'][$forum_id] >= $last_post_time) { // the forum read since the last post?
        return false;
    } else if (empty($pun_user['read_topics']['t']) && empty($pun_user['read_topics']['f'])) { // is it even possible that any of the new posts could be read?
        return true;
    } else {
        // now we must loop through all the "unread" topics in the forum and see if the user has read them.
        foreach($new_topics[$forum_id] as $topic_id => $last_post) {
            if ( // i'll be nice and explain this one for you. if:
                (empty($pun_user['read_topics']['f'][$forum_id]) || // the user hasn't marked the forum read, or
                $pun_user['read_topics']['f'][$forum_id] < $last_post) && // they have but the topic has been posted in since, AND
                (empty($pun_user['read_topics']['t'][$topic_id]) || // the user hasn't marked the topic read, or
                $pun_user['read_topics']['t'][$topic_id] < $last_post) // they have but the topic has been posted in since, then
            )
                return true; // the topic must be new
        }
        return false; // well, since every topic was marked read, then the forum must not have any new posts.
    }
}

Somehow this has to be linked to the index.php page.

I can reproduce that the second part works for the viewforum file.

Nothing atm. You also didn't seem to appear on my msn list yet.

Besides that the communities I run ask for subforums the things you mention are also a reason for me to be stubborn about this modification. If there's any testing needed you can send me a mail to get my msn or something alike.

@MattF - I'm glad someone with knowledge like you is trying to find a solution.

Agreed, This mod isn't difficult to install at all. There are just a few modifications for the index.php and viewforum.php files. I guess my knowledge about the queries needed is a bit limited.

Edit: it seems people were trying to solve this problem a while ago in the mark posts as read topic for a french version of the subforum mod. See this link for more info. It doesn't seem to be the exact same mod...but perhaps we could learn something from it.

When I get home I will test the suggestions. I remember I got the correct results on viewforum.php before. But (like bingiman said) it doesn't work for the index.

Perhaps a related problem with the subforums modification. Currently I installed the "mark topics as read" mod which marks post read as soon as you read them (instead of looking which posts are read since your last visit).

The original code install instructions for the mark topics as read mod:

#
#---------[ 40. OPEN ]--------------------------------------------------------
#

viewforum.php


#
#---------[ 41. FIND (line: 166) ]--------------------------------------------
#
        if (!$pun_user['is_guest'] && $cur_topic['last_post'] > $pun_user['last_visit'] && $cur_topic['moved_to'] == null)


#
#---------[ 42. REPLACE WITH ]------------------------------------------------
#

        // MOD: MARK TOPICS AS READ - 1 LINE MODIFIED CODE FOLLOWS
        if (!$pun_user['is_guest'] && topic_is_new($cur_topic['id'], $id,  $cur_topic['last_post']) && $cur_topic['moved_to'] == null)

After looking at the instructions from the subforum mod I found the following:

    // Are there new posts?

    if (!$pun_user['is_guest'] && $cur_subforum['last_post'] > $pun_user['last_visit'])

    {

        $item_status = 'inew';

        $icon_text = $lang_common['New icon'];

        $icon_type = 'icon inew';

    }

So after comparing those instructions I thought the line after // Are there new posts?" had to be changed to "if (!$pun_user['is_guest'] && topic_is_new($cur_subforum['id'], $id,  $cur_subforum['last_post']))". Sadly enough this didn't have the expected result (nothing changed). Can anyone tell me how to mark posts read in the subforums in the viewforum.php page? Currently the viewtopic.php page works like it should.

This seemed to do the trick. The weird thing is that only old messages are now displayed. New typed messages in the chatbox only show up without the special characters (no longer a question mark but still incomplete). I changed the database to utf-8 and the collation as well. What are the other things I need to do? It seems the queries that are send are no longer stored correctly in the database.

After I created a .htaccess file with that contents and cleared the forum cache directory nothing happened. I was thinking...if it's stored correctly in the database and the forum has no problem with showing those characters is it possible that the database doesn't send the strings in the correct character encoding?

Besides problems with these characters there also seems to be a problem with using "&".