[Bjorn]

Yeah, sorry about that.

[therabidwombat]

your forgiven.
_________________
How much crap would a wombat bat if a wombat could bat crap?

---------
Head Programmer on Worlds Beyond; Possibly entire EAA saga
Progress: ~40% done engine

[js71]

No he's not, the forums are still slow!
Go buy yourself some tapes instead, Bjorn. ;)

[XMark]

I haven't noticed any slowdown in the past couple of weeks. I got a good cable connection though
_________________
Mark Hall
Abstract Productions
I PLAYS THE MUSIC THAT MAKES THE PEOPLES FALL DOWN!

[Bjorn]

After downloading the forum database and doing some testing on my local server, I've come to the conclusion that there could be a significan't performance issue on the forum index page for people who keep unread messages in very old threads.

As long as there are old threads with unread posts the user apparently still wants to be notified about (or he could have used "mark all forums read"), the user's user_lastread variable can't be forwarded. All read stored times older than that are deleted. The top users with topic read times are:

MadQB (620)
Josiah Tobin (238)
Valderman (221)
Sirocco (194)
white_door (192)
BigManJones (175)

I see Sirocco is in the list though he claims to have tried the "mark all read" buttons. If this is really the case there is some bug there, but at least the "mark all forums read" button should clear out all your read time entries and forward user_lastread to current time.

It still shouldn't be the cause of minutes delay though, I'm talking several seconds here. In any case, could you try the "mark all forums read" button on the main forum index page, Josiah? If it solves the problem, I think it's best to install a query that will automatically remove read times over a month old or something like that.

And sorry about the verboseness of this post. :-)

[js71]

Much better now, after using 'mark all forums read'.

[janus]

I've never really liked phpBB. It always seemed kind of shoddy to me, and the funky way it handles 'new posts' was always one of the main reasons. It would be cool if you could get it to just display what's changed since the last time you visited the forums...

[Bjorn]

I didn't really like the way phpBB did it, that's why I've implemented this alternative method. :-) Normally phpBB uses cookies in combination with a last visit variable. Until not so long ago I was a modem user with an unreliable connection. You try to login, seems to fail, you hit refresh (and thus re-login) and gone are all the nice new post indentifications! Also, you might not have time to read all new posts (the forum has seen busier times), and with the old scheme you wouldn't be able to see what you missed last time.

Anyway, I've changed it to use a new method, based on the Allegro.cc forums stored the last time each user has read each thread.

So normally, phpBB DOES display what's new since the last time. Only the RPGDX one displays what's new since the last time + the new stuff you didn't look at on previous visits. If this is still shoddy to you, Janus, please explain what kind of behaviour you would rather see.

Josiah, thanks for trying it out. I'm glad it has worked for you, and that not some other mysterious performance issue remains to be found. :-)

[janus]

Ahh, so this is a customization. Would it be possible to make that behavior optional, with some sort of checkbox in the profile area?

[LeoDraco]

[janus]

[LeoDraco]

[Happy]

[Sirocco]

Yep, I've marked all topics as read. No significant improvement in speed, though :(

In the past the forums were quite fast, so for me this is a recent development.

edit:

I take that back. I just marked the forums again, and apparently that did the trick. I wonder why it didn't work last week?

.

[Bjorn]

I don't know either, one case doesn't make a pattern. Let's hope it was just a glitch.