I've been trying to ignore this as much as possible, but since I've just typed out a mini-novel to explain why this function is working for me, I figure I may as well get it explained here and be done with it. Sometimes, a rattlesnake will crawl away, but this is more like a bad dose of the clap, that just refuses to go away.
For the record, Test's post from 3:08 EST, last Thursday, still appears on my What's New? page. I've avoided reading it. But I've also been avoiding one of my (at least) daily tasks, to show you I know how to make What's New? work the way the rest of you are trying to make it work. I've not been clearing Firefox' cache history, to maintain the cookie from this site.
I'm going to try to make this as concise as possible. But it takes a bit to explain, so just relax and endure it. You can read it in a lot less time than it took me to type it.
First of all, the What's New? function is not a purpose-design function. It is an off-handed by-product that results from the way the rest of the software works and was added in as a function that will only play well with you, if you know the rules of the game. And even then, it will still throw you for a loop, just because.
Have you ever wondered why, when you have selected DXF-Red as the forum style you want to use, you can change to DXF and it will stay blue when you change pages? You can even log out and log back in and the blue will still be there. How does that work?
Have you ever wondered how What's New? knows I've not read Test's post, even though I've been logging in and out, over these last 4 days?
When you visit a Web site, there is a whole lotta shakin' goin' on that you do not see and do not realize is happening. And I'm going to bypass a lot of things and cut to the chase. You land here and you log in. When you log in, your browser and the database do some talking in the background. The site pings your browser, to see if you have a valid cookie for this site. Since you've been here before, your browser sends the cookie to the site and the site checks it for age, first of all. If you've not been here in 30 days, all bets are off and the site sends your browser a fresh cookie. If you were here just two hours ago, the site will
generally (not always, mind) receive the cookie from your browser and then everything is served to your browser as you expect, along with an updated cookie. Not a brand-new cookie, just an updated one.
If you have any new Personal Conversations, the site will flag you up and that updated cookie will keep the Inbox alert flagged up, to alert you. Once you've read the PC, the cookie is updated to reflect that and that alert will vanish.
When you log into the forums, the updated cookie will be time-stamped with the time. And the browser and the site will work back and forth with the time-stamp from your last log-out and the time-stamp from this log-in. The database will display all the posts that were made whilst you were away as being new posts, for instance.
Most of you will not have noticed, but on the day I converted the site from IP.Board to XenForo, I posted a reminder for everyone to clear their browser's cache history. Most you likely ignored it because you likely ignored the simple instructions I posted on how to do that procedure. But the reason I was reminding you to do that was to eliminate the IP.Board-issued cookie from your cache. That way, when you visited the new XenForo site, you were going to get a brand-new, XenForo-issued cookie. Otherwise, every time you logged into the site, your browser was going to try to submit that IP.Board cookie, which the XenForo software would not recognize, resulting in you getting yet another XenForo-issued cookie.
And you're wondering why What's New? was behaving strangely?
Now, here's another scenario for you. You visit the forums and you elect to have your browser always remember you. Which means you don't bother logging in and logging out. That's OK, but when you log-out, the cookie from this site is updated with that log-out time-stamp. If you leave the site without logging out, the database monitors your session for another 30 minutes, before it finally gives up on you and ends your session. When it ends your session, you're going to have a cookie with no time-stamp and the site is going to be holding a cookie with a time-stamp. Maybe you read all the new posts and then you just left without logging out. And 17 new threads were started in the next 30 minutes, when the database ended your session. But you wandered away before your session really ended. You show back up, the cookies don't match, you get a new cookie and things don't look the way they should. <shrug> But you saved all of 3-4 seconds by not having to log in, so shouldn't it be a fair trade-off?
Ol' Mike logs in when he gets here and I log out when I leave. I play havoc with the cookies from this site, because I clear cache at least once and sometimes 3 or 4 times a day. But that's OK, because while you're clicking an additional link to see where the new posts are, I use the method that actually
was purpose-designed to show you new posts. I log in and I scroll down the forum home page.
When I see a forum with this icon -
I know that is a forum with no new threads and no new posts. When I see a forum with this icon -
I know that is a forum with unread threads and/or posts. I then open the forum and look for thread titles being displayed in a bold font, because I know those are the new threads and/or the threads with new posts. I click on the thread title link and because I always mind to log-in and log-out, which means the cookie my browser is carrying is up-to-date, I get whisked away to the first unread post in that thread. The database marking works a treat for me, because I am always in possession of an updated cookie. For those of you saving those 6-8 seconds required for the laborious and odious procedure of logging in and logging out, you're likely not getting the same result.
If you want database marking to work as close as 100% of the time as you can get, follow these instructions -
1. Log into the forums when you arrive.
2. Log out of the forums when you are leaving.
3. Learn how to selectively clear cookies from your browser's cache, so you never delete the cookies from tbucketeers.com.
4. Be sure to log into the site at least once every 30 days, so you will always have an unexpired cookie.
Follow those rules and (generally) the What's New? function will play nicely with you. Clear all your cookies from cache and all bets are off.
Or, you can just use the forum-read and forum-unread node icons to point you where you want to be. A member asked me to add a What's New? link to the bottom of every page, to make it more convenient. More convenient? Are you fellows aware using What's New? requires at least as many clicks as using my method? When I'm at the bottom of the page, I use the bottom breadcrumb to take me right back to the forum I am already in, where I can grab the next unread thread/post. When I'm aware I am reading the last unread post in that forum, I click the Forums link in the breadcrumb, where I can scroll to the next forum with a forum-unread node icon. Guys when we get to a point where we're thinking that saving a single, potential mouse-click is significant, we need to go for a walk, smell the roses and enjoy our lives. I've been in this chair and online for 13+ hours today and trying to save a mouse-click anywhere has never entered my mind even once.
Now, I am going to log out, browse to another site, clean my cache, shut down and re-start Firefox and try to speed things back up. After 4 days of accumulating cache, this thing is running like a pregnant, constipated sow.
