Forums seem to be loosing the Unread message status

[azjoe]

vlad et al... sorry you're having a problem.

In general the 'new posts' search works fairly well (regardless of whether you call it from the new post link on the navbar or the search drop-down). I believe it relies on cookies to work, so if you have cookies disabled, set to clear when you exit your browser, or you take too long and your session times out (which appears to be at least partly the cause of the problem you're reporting) the results will be unreliable.

Personally, when I open the forum, the first thing I do is click 'new posts'... that way I capture all the new posts (in that tab of firefox, which is the browser I use). I then open the ones I want to read in new tabs... that way, no matter what, I still have the first tab containing all the new posts. If you're an IE browser user, I guess you could open them in a new window... but that's really cumbersome compared to tabs. (If you havn't tried firefox you should... it's a really nice browser... an it's free.)

FWIW, I believe I read somewhere that newer versions of the forum software can keep track of the read status in the database instead of using cookies... and it supposedly works much more reliably. We'll look into that when we next upgrade the forum. ...joe

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edit:

I checked the latest version (3.5.4) of the forum software (which we haven't installed -- we are running 3.0.8)... here's a quote for one of the new config items:

This option controls how threads and forums are marked as read.

1. Inactivity/Cookie Based - once a user has been inactive for a certain amount of time (the value of the cookie timeout option [ed. -- default is 900-seconds]) all threads and forums are considered read. Individual threads are marked as read within a session via cookies. This option is how all versions of vBulletin before 3.5 functioned.

2. Database (no automatic forum marking) - this option uses the database to store thread and forum read times. This allows accurate read markers to be kept indefinitely. However, in order for a forum to be marked read when all threads are read, the user must view the list of threads for that forum.

This option is more space and processor intensive than inactivity-based marking.

3. Database (automatic forum marking) - this option is the same as a previous option, but forums are automatically marked as read when the last new thread is read.

This is the most usable option for end users, but most processor intensive.