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Feature Requests, Ideas and Next Version

View first unread post

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View first unread post

markwaterous

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Aug 9, 2011 - 8:13 pm

I would love, love, love to see a "View first unread post" icon, preferably everywhere, but at the very least on the subscribed posts list. It seems at present I can go to the first post, or the last post, but if there have been multiple posts I'm left hunting it down on my own.

This would also be a great addition to the "Topics with unread posts" page, as I know I'm not alone in browsing most forums this way; I like to go straight to the unread posts page, then traverse the topics via the view first unread button. It greatly simplifies keeping up to speed on heavily trafficked forums.

While I'm thinking about it, and if we do have this option I apologize but it would be nice to see some switches that let me decide whether or not a certain feature (such as subscribed posts) shows up in a modal, or on its own page. It's a snazzy feature and I think you guys did an excellent job of implementing it in a good way... but it would be nice to have the choice in the end.

Yellow Swordfish

Glinton, England

SP Master

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Aug 10, 2011 - 6:13 am

We use popups so that we can bring the smaller volume of data in with ajax calls for the very reason of limiting page loads which take longer. We can certainly consider making that an option at some point but I have to be honest and say it would be low on the agenda. And as the 'keeper of the agenda' I can tell you it's pretty long! [Image Can Not Be Found]

New and unread post handling is something that crops up every now and then and we take a tour around the houses with someone. We improve this with every major release and have hopefully improved this in the forthcoming V5 as well. I am actually looking in to how easy it would be to add a link to the first unread post in a topic as opposed to just the last post so maybe we will get there as well. A little early to tell on that one yet.

YELLOW

SWORDFISH

markwaterous

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Free Members

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Aug 11, 2011 - 7:18 pm

I know the word of one person you just met is hard to go by, but I am confident in saying that what might seem like a small feature addition would be welcomed by a lot of people. A little while back the discussion of how people managed their forum reading came up in a decently sized community (nearing 3 million posts) and while everybody had their own routine, a lot of those involved using the view unread button - especially useful for moderators who need to view every thread, regardless of activity in it.

Do you guys run a public trac? I'd love to see your list sometime and figure out if I could donate some time and a few patches towards pushing 5.0 out. I'm liking it enough that if I was a little more life on the edge I'd run it in production already (don't worry, I know better... usually).

Yellow Swordfish

Glinton, England

SP Master

Offline

Aug 12, 2011 - 5:09 am

I fully appreciate the ideals. Our aim is always - and even more so with V5 - to get as close to them as possible without jeopardising performance and code size. Let's be honest, V4 and prior versions were getting out of hand and becoming more difficult to customise and add to. It also always has to be borne in mind that this is a WP plugin so there is already a lot going on before SP kicks in.

In an ideal world we would know exactly which posts a user has at least opened and which ones he hasn't. But the volume of data storage for this gets exponentially large very quickly. So we have to compromise. Also - one of the major criticisms of SP has been the number of queries actioned for each page load. While MySQL is perfectly capable of quick and heavy usage all of the major data select queries have been re-written specifically to cut that number down - in some areas by as much as 60-70%. New post checking is both data and query hungry.

Having said that and as already said above - we hope we are improving this all of the time (I did more work in this area yesterday which should be up in svn later today all being well). And we are open to specific and informed suggestions. I have said before on these forums and will say again here - if someone comes up with a data and processing model that is at least as lightweight as what we have now which improves in a worthwhile way on what we have now then I would like to hear it.

I don't know how familiar you have been with past versions but have you played with the Admin Bar plugin? This has been around in SP for some years now and while aimed specifically at forum admins and moderators it does ensure that all new posts are seen and checked by someone. V5 also adds optional Akismet checking to all posts.

In the Information menu at the top there is a link to our bug tracker. It is not public in that we allow people to raise issues. As there are only two of us working SP (code, site, support, documentation etc) then allowing that would be a disaster as we would end up spending our time just pruning! But anyone is welcome to look at the issues we currently have open and the state of play.

And we have been on the lookout for a third pair of hands to ease the burden for a long time. I just mention that in case you are tempted [Image Can Not Be Found].

YELLOW

SWORDFISH