"New Posts" Icon Behaviour
Printed From: Web Wiz Forums
Category: Web Wiz Web App Support Forums
Forum Name: Web Wiz Forums
Forum Description: Support forum for Web Wiz Forums application.
URL: https://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=20648
Printed Date: 11 April 2026 at 10:09am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.08 - https://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: "New Posts" Icon Behaviour
Posted By: SMR Group
Subject: "New Posts" Icon Behaviour
Date Posted: 12 July 2006 at 6:05am
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boRg,
Can you explain a little about how Web Wiz determines if there are new posts in a topic? I'm seeing some unpredictable behaviour.
The default.asp page uses:
ElseIf CDate(dtmLastVisitDate) < dtmLastEntryDate Then
...whereas forum_topics.asp uses:
ElseIf blnNewPost = True Then
If a user goes via the homepage to read a topic in which there are new posts, then goes back to the homepage, that forum still has a new topic icon. On the forum_topics page however, immediately all the posts are read the icons change.
Is it possible to have the homepage behave in the same way?
By-the-way I'm also changing unread topic title links to bold just to make them a little easier to spot.
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Replies:
Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 12 July 2006 at 9:36am
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This has been discussed to death in some length, please do a search.
------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting |
Posted By: SMR Group
Date Posted: 12 July 2006 at 6:21pm
Perhaps you would be so kind as to suggest what to search for?
'new posts icon' has found 3 results (none relevant)
'new posts' has found 131 results (none relevant)
'CDate(dtmLastVisitDate)' has found 1 result (this post)
A link to a thread maybe?
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-boRg- wrote:Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 13 July 2006 at 9:29am
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OK, lookjs like I'll have to go through it all again. The actual feature is 'new posts since last visit' rather than just new posts, which is how most forums work. Within a forum when you look at a new post a cookie is stored so it can be checked if the post has been viewed, which is quite easy and simple and doesn't course a performance issue. However, on the forums main page the date of the users last visit is checked against the date of the last post, if the date of the last post is newer a new post icon is displayed. Now, you could go through a check if each of the new posts in that forum has been viewed, but this would require getting and reading in the date for each new post in that forum and checking against the cookie if it has been read. This would require allot of database hits to do this processing, this would then mean, instead of 1 database hit for the data for that page and a processing time of 0.04 seconds you would be seeing upwards of 100 database hits on a forum like this and a processing time of 3 to 5 seconds. This would also lead to problems with server resources being used up for this very resource hungry procedure. This means that for performance reasons on the forums mains page the feature needs to be 'New Posts Since Last Vist'. As a type of solution to this the main forum page also includes a link at the bottom to 'Mark all posts as read' ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting |
Posted By: SMR Group
Date Posted: 13 July 2006 at 7:17pm
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boRg, thank you, that's most helpful. Regarding the main page behaviour (and of the forum in general), what determines when a user visit has ended and when they've re-entered? Is it a cookie or server session? |
Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 14 July 2006 at 8:28am
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The forum session for a user is stored in the web servers memory, or in the database if you have edited the forum to store session data in the database. This session data is stored for 15 minutes after the user was last active in the forum, after this time the session data is cleared for that user. ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting |
Posted By: SMR Group
Date Posted: 15 July 2006 at 2:34am
| Thank you. Out of interest I supposed that could be changed in IIS? I think 15 minutes strikes just about the right balance anyway. |
Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 16 July 2006 at 11:39am
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I've just checked and it is actually 20 minuets and as web wiz forums uses it's own more secure session tracking system you would need to edit the file functions/functions_session_data.asp on the following line to change the session timeout time:- If CDate(sarySessionData(2, intSessionArrayPass)) < DateAdd("n", -20, Now()) Then ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting |
Posted By: ibaker
Date Posted: 21 July 2006 at 4:06am
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Borg - if this has been done to death then many others are having the same problem (if you would call it a problem) but you say that "this is the way that most forums work" I was hoping that you may get a chance to look into how other popular forums do do it like:
Invision
SMF
phpBB
Snitz
Invision is the best as it remembers everything and in my evaluation of just the above 4 forums (I haven't looked into others) I have not noticed any performance hit - perhaps we just need to think outside the square  ------------- regards Ian http://www.recreationalflying.com.au/forum - http://www.recreationalflying.com.au/forum Pay for a WWF licence - I did - help this great software to get even better! |