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forum / topic status indicators

AW Aaron Wentzel
Aaron Wentzel
Member
Member since Mar 2012
47 posts
Mar 21, 2012 · 9:02 pm · Edited

In the pre 5.0 version there were different status indicators used, my 11k plus users loved these status icons because they immediately new where they had posted before and the status.  I have many users that have posted thousands of times so it’s hard for them to track what conversation they are part of.  This absolutely loved this feature and say it’s what set’s my forum apart from the other forums.  A differenciator.

I’ve looked into the code to try and implement the indicators based on forum/topic status.  As far as i can tell these are the business rules previously used in 4.0

1) User has posted in a topic before and there are new posts since user’s last post in this topic (topicnewuser.png : grey bubble, red bubble)

2) user has posted in a topic before and there are no new posts since user’s last post in this topic. (topic.png : grey bubble, grey bubble)

3) there is a new topic and a user has not yet posted in. (topicnew.png : white bubble, red bubble)

4) what did the topickey.png mean? When was this used?

5) what did the topickeyuser.png mean? When was this used?

6) lastly, how can i change 5.0 code to be determine the proper status conditions to display these old icons. 

 

Please help me reimplement these into version 5.0 code.

Thanks,

Aaron

3 Answers

New Answer
YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member
Member since Nov 2008
16,437 posts
Mar 22, 2012 · 6:01 am

We have built in support for icons at group view (forum listing) and forum view (topic listing)  to show there are new posts. We have NOT added support for an indicator to show if the current user has posted in a topic. There are two reasons for this. Firstly it adds a quite ugly and expensive extra SQL query for every row – the main reason –  and secondly it is fairly redundant as most users already know which topics they have contributed to.

The built in support for the new post icons does not currently include one-off, row level custom icons but then neither did V4.

As I have already written detailed instructions elsewhere on how to do this forgive me if I just give you a link to that post.

I would add that I do regret that we did not supply default unread icons with the initial release and will almost certainly add them at some point.

AW Aaron Wentzel
Aaron Wentzel
Member
Member since Mar 2012
47 posts
Apr 1, 2012 · 2:01 pm

Yes. I have implemented this already per the link you provided.  It’s working pretty good.  However, my users are now having problems understanding this functionality.

Because if an unread icon is showing and then they click into the topic to read that post.  The icon does not change.  Even if they come back 20 minutes later after browsing elsewhere that same topic / post still shows up as unread?

is there code i can add to force a read status change?  It acts as if an admin has to mark an item as ‘read’ in order for the status icon indicator to change.

MP Mr Papa
Mr Papa
Member
Member since Dec 2006
19,448 posts
Apr 1, 2012 · 2:17 pm

I would suggest reading:  http://wiki.simple-press.com/faq-answers/understand-unread-post-lists/

which tries to explain how that works…

its unread since last visit…  actually marking each topic realtime would be hugely expensive in terms of cpu and db queries…

if they logged out or timed out, they would get marked as read… our each user has a button to mark all unread topics as read…