[JNewell]

I couldn't find an answer in the archives here. What I'm wondering is: if I visit Rifle Country at 8pm, read a while, then go to Shotguns at 8:10, when I next come back to THR, will it show "new posts" (the yellow and red folders) based on the 8pm time, or the 8:10 time? My impression is that it uses a single time for all forums to show threads with new posts.

This seems to be different from the "first unread post" function (on the LH side of the thread title) which seems to be timed based on the last post actually read in each individual thread.

Thanks for any insights!

[P95Carry]

Now this is slightly speculative here but .. I get the impression that any and every time you access a page in any forum ... your ''visit'' is logged against your user ID .... and so in theory, your ''post history'' or progress should be pretty much up to date all the time.

I have noticed that if I post and then go ''elsewhere'' on the board ... that an email notification can drop in real quick when someone else has just added their post to my last thread visit .. so it does seem that post progress is almost ''real time''.

Seeing as this software runs on .php and MySQL databasing ... things are pretty immmediate.

Not sure if this is quite what you are asking .. and only my thoughts. :)

[Mal H]

JNewell, AFAIK, when you return, after a specific timeout period, you will see new posts from the end time of your last visit. If you come back before the timeout period, the old new-post time will be used, usually the end of your next previous session if you have taken no "mark posts read" action. All forums are treated equally at the time of return. So even if you didn't read anything in Rifles, for example, that forum will still be reset and show only new posts from the time of your last visit. Using your example, that would be the 8:10 time stamp.

The algorithm might be more complicated than that and I wouldn't be surprised if it is.

Your understanding of the "unread posts" is the same as mine.

[tyme]

There's a cookie that keeps track of (threadid, timestamp) pairs. The info is not logged by THR. I presume that vbulletin makes every logical determination it can from those data points. When it processes the cookie when trying to display the forum page, it knows which threads you've looked at, which you haven't... If you come back after the session timelimit, it simplifies the list by marking threads with timestamps before your last activity as "read" even though they might not be. Otherwise you'd be scrolling down page 2, 3, 4 of a forum and seeing a whole bunch of open envelope icons. That might be cool... not sure why it doesn't do that. Maybe vbulletin deletes (threadid, timestamp) pairs after they get to a certain age. That would explain it.

[P95Carry]

Thx tyme ...... looks like I was way off base .. guessing is not very accurate! I had thought the cookies were mainly just keeping log-in info.