Can you please add a link to most recent posts

domi

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
Hi Scott,

Can you add a link to http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?action=recent up on top (next to the user picture) where it is more accessible than having to visit the Cassiopaea Form - Info center to access the same link.
I don't like the unread feature in the sense that when I have read a topic it dissapears from the 'unread' list. And then of course I don't remember what subcategory of the forum I was just reading in so it is not that practical to find things back.

If you want I can clone Recent.php and turn it into a 'activity of last 24hrs' like with the old board.
Let me know.

Best,
Dominique
 
I agree. I find it irritating when stuff I have read disappears from my forum radar.
 
Me three; same problem as Domi, especially whan I want to go back to that same thread for whatever reason.

It's no big deal to do another search, but it does necessitate the use of cussing!
 
I was thinking about it just yesterday! It would save a lot of precious time and bandwidth. In a couple of occasions I just gave up searching after half an hour of mouse's clicks. :boat:
 
Actually, I found that there is a link to most recent posts at the bottom of the page with "forum stats":

69,508 Posts in 8,694 Topics by 2,498 Members. Latest Member: Leper
Latest Post: "Re: I am here" ( Today at 18:11:02 )
View the most recent posts on the forum.
[More Stats]

However, the way it displays them, the entire post, is tiresome to scroll through. Surely there is a better way to do this?
 
Laura said:
Surely there is a better way to do this?

modifying the recent posts PHP document in SMF is a bit tricky (in my own experience anyway), however, that link can be removed from the info center very easily and switched out with displaying the titles of the most recent topics right below the info center. to remove the link, comment it out in the board index template PHP file. to add the recent post title links, check the "Admin" section under "Current Theme" - there's an option titled "Number of recent posts to display on board index"

hope that helps!
 
JonnyRadar said:
Laura said:
Surely there is a better way to do this?

modifying the recent posts PHP document in SMF is a bit tricky (in my own experience anyway), however, that link can be removed from the info center very easily and switched out with displaying the titles of the most recent topics right below the info center. to remove the link, comment it out in the board index template PHP file. to add the recent post title links, check the "Admin" section under "Current Theme" - there's an option titled "Number of recent posts to display on board index"

hope that helps!

I noticed that, and I turned it on briefly, but unfortunately it just grabs the latest X posts and plops them into one big box at the bottom of the page. Well, that's kind of what we need, but there's a problem: sometimes we can have 300 posts in a day, so we therefore need the listing to be on a separate page.

So, I just took a look at the SMF forum code, and YIKES!! I am officially way out of my PHP league. When I see 20-line SQL queries and functions calling functions calling functions calling functions, etc. across multiple files just to get some data and display it in a box, well... it would take me weeks to figure it all out. Plus, whatever we do must be simple and must not break with a forum update. I've already done 2 updates just by clicking a button since we put this forum up. That's one reason we picked this forum software: it makes life a lot easier and saves a ton of time. Manually re-modding a bunch of files in 3 different SOTT PunBB forums every time an update came out was rather time-consuming and really not worth all the effort when there were simpler, better solutions available.

I did find a couple plugins that do what we need, but unfortunately they're not updated yet for the newest version. Before I set up this forum, I tried to force some plugins to work with a test version even though they claimed they were "not compatible". BAD IDEA!!! And if nobody is updating a plugin, what good is it? If SMF comes out with another security hole patch, well, we want to apply it ASAP.

So, I'm not sure what to do to solve the problem. I'll keep searching and see if I turn up something that doesn't involve getting a PhD in computer science. :P
 
Well, for what it's worth, when you did turn it on briefly, I didn't think it was bad at all - and it was very helpful. It looks a little odd being a big block at the bottom of the page, but it sure was nice to see which posts I'd missed from having to click around so much on new threads.
 
Kresnik said:
So, I'm not sure what to do to solve the problem. I'll keep searching and see if I turn up something that doesn't involve getting a PhD in computer science. :P

:lol: :lol: :lol:
yea, SMF is a bit of a PHP jungle. even if you got that PhD you'd still be using it to swat flies as you hacked your way through endless queries. :P i think you're right, that the "show most recent topics on the index" feature is a quick fix, really only practical for viewing the last 10-20 posts. if you get any larger than that, the block will take up half the index page! with some creative coding you can split the topics shown into two or three columns within the info center box, but that begins to get aesthetically cumbersome as well. :shock:

just found this - there is an AJAX mod that will display the most recent posts and (i think) is customizable. once installed, all you need to do is change the link on "view the most recent posts" from ?action=recent to ?action=recenttopics. (_http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1284) it's compatible with SMF 1.1.6.
 
JonnyRadar said:
i think you're right, that the "show most recent topics on the index" feature is a quick fix, really only practical for viewing the last 10-20 posts.

Agreed.

It seems in a circular way PHP has become assembly language. Quick, somebody invent another language to resolve this ;-)

@Scott: Thanks for the link.
 
JonnyRadar said:
just found this - there is an AJAX mod that will display the most recent posts and (i think) is customizable. once installed, all you need to do is change the link on "view the most recent posts" from ?action=recent to ?action=recenttopics. (_http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1284) it's compatible with SMF 1.1.6.

Okay, I took a peek at this one, and basically what it does is give you a page like the "most recent posts" that would show up in the info box, but it's an entirely separate page. It does require a couple little tweaks here and there, but nothing major. It's still all on one page with no pagination, but the number of posts it lists is customizable. Also, it autorefreshes through JavaScript magic, and that time period is also customizable. So, it wouldn't necessarily show the posts in the last 24 hours, but we could make it show the last, say, 75 or 100 posts. We could actually have it show more if we turned off the auto-refresh. If somebody leaves the window open all day, it'll keep banging on the server every X seconds, which would be bad juju. And without the refresh (easy to turn off!), it would give a nice big chunk of recent posts in a nice list format, et voila! And if it breaks on an upgrade, it's separated enough that it won't take down the rest of the forum with crazy error messages.

So, tomorrow I'll try to get it integrated with our theme, and I think we'll have our solution!! Nice find, BTW!!

:D
 
Kresnik said:
If somebody leaves the window open all day, it'll keep banging on the server every X seconds, which would be bad juju.

aye :O that would be bad... certainly don't want to ping the server all day long!

Kresnik said:
So, tomorrow I'll try to get it integrated with our theme, and I think we'll have our solution!! Nice find, BTW!!

cool! :D glad it seems to be working out... looking forward to seeing it in action!

as a side note, if you guys haven't checked out the SMF support forums, i'd recommend it... it's crazy active, and people there are extremely helpful. that's where the tip for the mod came from - _http://www.simplemachines.org/community/
 
Okeydokey!

Now if you click "View the most recent posts on the forum" at the top, it will take you to the most recent 100 posts, and they won't disappear after you click them.

If you click the same "View the most recent posts on the forum" at the bottom of the page, it gives the summary listing like before.
:cool2:
 
Kresnik said:
Okeydokey!

Now if you click "View the most recent posts on the forum" at the top, it will take you to the most recent 100 posts, and they won't disappear after you click them.

If you click the same "View the most recent posts on the forum" at the bottom of the page, it gives the summary listing like before.
:cool2:

Wow, great. Thanks a lot.

46914.gif
46905.gif
46903.gif
 
Kresnik said:
Okeydokey!

Now if you click "View the most recent posts on the forum" at the top, it will take you to the most recent 100 posts, and they won't disappear after you click them.

If you click the same "View the most recent posts on the forum" at the bottom of the page, it gives the summary listing like before.
:cool2:
:rockon: :scooter:
 
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