[Bjorn]

Today I've been working on quite a bit of forum hacking, changing the way new posts are identified.

Traditionally, phpbb2 takes your last visit and displays any posts after that date as new, using cookies to stop displaying posts you have read that session as new. This is nice and convenient, but annoying when you don't have time to read all new posts and you want to continue reading the new ones at another time. Also, if something goes wrong with logging in, the second time you try the last visit date might have been reset already and the new post identifications are gone. Last but not least, when I would make 1 login for both RPGDX and the forums, a short visit to RPGDX would remove the new posts identification from the forums.

This is why I've implemented a different method. I've made the forum use another table to store at which time any of you has read each thread, and it uses that data to determine if it should display a post as new. The new posts identification is done on different pages and in different ways, and each needed to be adapted. Also, the 'mark all threads as read' and 'mark all forums as read' links had to be updated.

I don't expect everything to be working straight away, but the systems needs some testing. If you come upon any strange behaviour, or if you are annoyed by some aspect of the new system, I urge you tell me about it.

[Nexinarus]

Yeah its very slick and organised. I like.
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Anorexia is phat!

[Bjorn]

Ok, thanks, but I guess you must be talking about the forum layout instead of this new posts identification. :-)

Anyway, been making a slight optimization today. The size of the table with read-times was O(users*threads), which has the potential to grow quite big. With this optimization, the expected size is actually 0, assuming everybody reads all new posts before leaving.