You can also browse unread topics / posts from the forums themselves. When you first load SP you are presented with the groups (Group View) containing forums, and in each forum row at the end are status icons.

The one that looks like an expand / collapse icon will allow you to view all unread posts of that forum in chronological order.

I understand where you are coming from with the admin bar being very useful, but it does a lot more than a regular member needs. It highlights every single post to you as an admin, something a user wouldn’t probably be interested in seeing (or interested in keeping tidy!) hence the fact that all the user unread posts are within the forum itself.

You can customise the templates to remove whichever unread posts function you find least useful if you want, so essentially you have the three methods to pick from. The two icons in the header are probably the most useful, as it allows you to firstly browse unread topics / posts, but also mark all as read. These are sorted chronologically but only within their respective forums.

If you do decide you want to remove some of the methods of reading unread posts to cut down on confusion for your users, we always recommend making a child theme to preserve any changes you make.

Well in fact i’m coming from a Simple Machine forum, separated from my WordPress site – started it on march 2014, and got now 3,2K members and 112K posts wich is i guess enough to detect what is going wrong or not. Just under the header there is a part to see recent topics, then a collapsible menu with useful links, the most used of them is the one leading to a page showing the recent unread messages, page added to the favorites by a large number of members.

I have opened last sunday the SP forum and everyone is totally lost, me, moderators, members, this is a major problem (and in fact the only one, others points are just little details, and the SP forum offers great things that doesn’t exist on my first one).

The theme is about how to save money, most of my members have a computer knowledge near to zero, they want simple things easy to find, that’s why i have took the admin barr as the best example (if i tell you that the majority is not able to upload an avatar because of the size limitation you believe me ?).

Another point, it’s a french forum, never happy people, *insert a smiling frog here* ^^… 

Joking aside, that’s why i really think that is missing a simple way to find recent post (wich should stay recent even if read), and another one to find unread posts- something easy to find, on the top, with a clear presentation, sorted by date, showing the author.

Once they got this, then can if they want use the “+” icon on each forum to see the news, and i’m pretty sure it would be perfect. 

Btw, despite of the fact i’m french, i’m very happy with your support, great team here, will gladly renew my membership to be a pain in *moderated by myself* 🙂

afraid the recent post lists or the unread lists both are simply unread posts…  no easy way to change this…  though they can put put in chronological order instead of the default group/forum ordering…

however, if you just want recent post, I would suggest using the widget/shortcode for our recent posts widget (or template tag) from the template tags plugin…  It does exactly what you want, I believe… you can see it in action in our footer….  but you can put it anywhere you want – even in the middle of your forum…

Yeap already tried the template tag plugin, and used the shortcode inserted in a separate page.

The main problem is the unread messages, well i will try to find a way to modify the css of the pop-up, i’m not very talented, but could you explain me how to sort the result by date please, i have not found the solution ?

Btw i have found a better example of what i need – when you go to a member’s profile, you’ve got two buttons to see the list of his topics or comments of the member, and when you click on them you’ve got a new page well ordered and clear – the same with the unread messages and it’s paradise 😉

You get the same list when you click the unread posts icon in the header (bottom right of the header above), although it’s not specifically topics you’ve posted in, but it’s the same ordered list.

If that’s the ‘popup’ you’re referring to, it should be sorted by date. If it’s not, could you take a screenshot?

Yes Ike that pop-up, it’s the same here in your forum: sorted by forum, then by date, not by date:

That’s why here i got a message posted 3 hours ago, then 50 minutes ago, then 3 hours, then 2 hours….Not logical when talking about recent posts.

By comparison here what i had on my old forum, a page showing unread messages only, sorted by date only, and it was possible to mark one/some/all messages as read to delete them from the list without having to read – that was the most visited page after the homepage:

its unread recent posts… so after reading, they wont show up… if you want that, I would suggest using the recent posts widget/template tag/shortcode… they are static…

also, as I previously mentioned, the unread posts are sorted by group/forum… but you can change it to by date if you like… see:  https://simple-press.com/documentation/codex/api/template-functions-and-the-api/display-template-functions/common-view/sp_unreadpostsinfo/

in particular, the group argument to the function… you can also change the popup to a fixed page if you like..

Aaaaah thank you Mr Papa you helped me a lot with this article.

Got almost what i needed now for the unread messages, and btw i noticed that when loaded on a separate page the url of this page can be used everywhere and for everyone too, something like http://mywebsite/forum/newposts/?first=0&group=0 

Sorry to have bothered you with my newbie questions 🙂

Glad we got there in the end 🙂