[Pugged] Tracking Read Topics/Messages, and the "unread"flag.

[Chris Van Cleve]

InvisionBoard is the best thing going, free-wise. phpBB is ok, and very ikonboard-ish. I don't care for phorum at all.

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Chris Hettinger" <chris@efr.org>
Reply-To: ciapug@ciapug.org
Date:  Fri, 06 Sep 2002 14:13:53 -0500

>So am I correctly hearing you, I have basically two choices:
>
>1. Based on a date comparison only:
>I store a time/date stamp in the members profile, upon a visit I compare the forums/topics most recent activity to the stamp stored for the user.
>
>Pros: Likely the easiest way
>Cons: Can't flag a topic for forum individually.
>
>OR
>
>2. I maintain a table containing a record for each user's read topics:
>Like Tim's table diagram. In a table I store the id for every topic the user has read.
>
>Pro: Could individually track a topic
>Cons: Phew, logic. I would have to not only maintain the topic id, but that topic recent activity (last post stamp) to handle each time he views that topics, so that I don't have to also track each reply to a specific topic.... *head explodes*
>
>... Sigh.
>
>Chris Van Cleve:
>I think #2. Once the user visits a the forums index page (Forum listing) I grab the last visited date, assign it to a variable then update that field in the members profile with the current time/date. This assigned variable is then used as the comparison for each forum and topic. I think the key should be that I only do that last visit update one time. Which I think I am doing, correctly. hmmm.
>
>Tim:
>You mentioned Phorum, how would their process mostly like compare to that of phpBB forums, or Invision Boards (another php based forum app) ... I have the phpBB source files, and looked through them but they are pretty cryptic to me still, so tearing them apart for logic is a hunting trip. I finally found a db table list and saw one name topic_watch which could be the table they use, similar to option 2 ... 
>
>hmmm.
>
>-ch
>
>
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