forum

current user?

How is it scripted to only show a forum post that hasn't been read by the
current user?

When you show a post to a user, you mark in a table somewhere the
combination of userid and postid (sorry, I don't know your schema, but
surely there is a piece of data that uniquely identifies the user, and one
that does the same for the post).

Now, I don't know what database you're using either, but in SQL Server you
could use a LEFT JOIN against this table and when the user exists on the
right, s/he's already read the article, otherwise s/he has not.

A

I mean.. if 1000 members read 1000 posts, their name would have to appear
on every post made.
Why would you use a name? If "Joe Buttafiko" reads post 1, then changes his
username to "Heidi Fleiss" and reads post 2, how are you going to know
they're the same user? Don't you have a surrogate (like UserID) that is a
much skinnier identifier for this kind of thing? Anyway, is that really
going to be more data than the post themselves? I highly doubt it.
that would be a million lines in that table...

but wouldn't that create a large DB eventuly??

Everything has the potential to create a large db. It's all in how you
manage it.

I mean.. if 1000 members read 1000 posts, their name would have to appear
on every post made.

Why would you use a name? If "Joe Buttafiko" reads post 1, then changes
his username to "Heidi Fleiss" and reads post 2, how are you going to know
they're the same user? Don't you have a surrogate (like UserID) that is a
much skinnier identifier for this kind of thing? Anyway, is that really
going to be more data than the post themselves? I highly doubt it.

that would be a million lines in that table...

Oh no! A million rows? Unless you're running Access or hosting SQL
Express on a laptop with a dying battery, this is not going to be a drop
in the bucket for an enterprise database system. I manage clustered
servers on SANs with TB of data, and I can't imagine that requiring more
disk space for high volumes of traffic is the worst problem you could have
(unless you don't serve ads, I guess).

i am getting at, is the forums i have used in the past, don't use that
approach. not sure how they do it, but it isn't don't that way. i have
looked in the tables and i don't see anything showing that a userid has
visited a post.

i am getting at, is the forums i have used in the past, don't use that
approach. not sure how they do it, but it isn't don't that way. i have
looked in the tables and i don't see anything showing that a userid has
visited a post.

I am in the process of writing my own forum. It is gone fairly well so far.
I been searching different forum scripts, both asp and php, and I can't
find this answer.

How is it scripted to only show a forum post that hasn't been read by the
current user?
I feel it has something to do with the last visit, and or the date of the
post.

But I am not sure how this is done. On my phpbb forum, I can go in and
read something, go back to index, refresh, and that post is now marked as
read. how is this done?

Any ideas or suggestions?

i have looked at webwiz forums, snitz forums, as well as phpbb.. and
couldn't find it.

thanks
jeff

yes... i do have unique id's for the users, instead of the names. but
what i am getting at, is the forums i have used in the past, don't use
that approach. not sure how they do it, but it isn't don't that way. i
have looked in the tables and i don't see anything showing that a userid
has visited a post.

Well, maybe they store it in a cookie on the client's machine.
Personally, I'd rather have the information (but maybe they were very
cheap on disk space).