Did the recent posts section get shorter?

[RKA]

Or am I losing my mind?

 

[AlexThePalex]

I have the same feeling.

 

[Billnut]

Ditto on that.

 

[sae]

The recent posts being 100 rows long is largely the reason the forum runs slow. Notice on any other page, you never get more than 10-15 posts at a time. It makes the front page the slowest loading of any other page on the site.

If it were my forum, I'd eliminate the recent posts altogether and just have everyone use the unread search. It's much more organized and personalized to what you've read and haven't and makes the recent posts at the bottom redundant. Once you start using it, you'll never go back to sifting through that giant list of individual posts.

Shane is nicer than me though and listens to his users more, for better or worse.

 

[VW mick]

Strange my replies have been listing every reply I've ever made not just curant ones
Thought it was just me 

 

[sae]

Strange my replies have been listing every reply I've ever made not just curant ones
Thought it was just me

There's a quick fix, click the mark all posts read button on the front page and it'll go back to normal.

 

[semenza]

      The recent posts is useful to some. The question to keep it or not has been tossed around before. I always use the Unread Since Last visit or All Unread. But there are times when I do use the Recent Posts section to quickly find a post that I have already read. It has it's uses and some people prefer it.

    You can also set up a favorites or hot button on your computer/device  to take you straight to All Unread or Unread Since Last visit. There by skipping the main page with the forum boards list and the Recent Post list.

Seth

 

[Administrator_JSVN]

I made the change, which is likely to be temporary, to see what effect it might have on forum performance. I'm not sure that the impact will be significant. But, it was worth taking a look at. Let me see how it goes for a short period and then evaluate whether to revert back to 100 post vs. 50 posts.

 

[Alan m]

im with seth.
I never use the recent post feature.
I even had to go looking at to see whats happening
iv probable only used it a handful of times in the last  few years.

if having it shorter improves performance im all for scraping it.
I would like to be a able to turn it off

 

[Administrator_JSVN]

I would like to be a able to turn it off

To turn it off, hit the arrow to the right of the section.

 

[nickao]

The recent post feature is must have and I want it as long as possible, it is working great for me by the way.

Who wants to go through the sections, not me. I read this site daily(sometimes not logged in-one in while I skip a month or two) for 7 years and the recent posts is the way I can monitor everything, everyday really fast.

I actually have all the topics off. There used to be a way for me to put recent post first, but I can't find that anymore. But at least with the tops shrunk the recent post still require little scrolling down for me.

Unlike many I also have the post read set to see the most recent post first, not last. It always confuses me when someone refers to a post at the bottom or top.

 

[Administrator_JSVN]

While I understand some members prefer the format of the Recent Posts section, the Unread and Replies buttons are the quickest and most concise way to review what's new since your last visit.

 

[nickao]

Yes I use the unread if I miss a few days or months. 

 

[jmbfestool]

I never have and don't think I will ever use the recent post on the front page. 

 

[nickao]

I use the info center mostly as well. I rarely ever click the recent post button.There used to be a way of adjusting the length of the recent post under info section, not sure if we still can. The OP asked if it got shorter, I dont think so.

 

[AlexThePalex]

The recent posts being 100 rows long is largely the reason the forum runs slow. Notice on any other page, you never get more than 10-15 posts at a time. It makes the front page the slowest loading of any other page on the site.

I don't get it. It's just text. Links. They're not updated real time. How can that slow the forum down? Does it need and extensive database search or something?

It's much more organized and personalized to what you've read and haven't and makes the recent posts at the bottom redundant. Once you start using it, you'll never go back to sifting through that giant list of individual posts.

Everybody has their own preferences. I exclusively use the recent posts section so I can see exactly what was new. I never use the unread feature. And I fail to see how a list of 100 is "giant". I scan throught it in 10 to 20 seconds.

Shane is nicer than me though and listens to his users more, for better or worse.

Thank god for that. [tongue]

I made the change, which is likely to be temporary, to see what effect it might have on forum performance. I'm not sure that the impact will be significant. But, it was worth taking a look at. Let me see how it goes for a short period and then evaluate whether to revert back to 100 post vs. 50 posts.

Please get it back as soon as you can. As said above, I always use it, and with the list down to 50 I'm more likely to miss posts. Previously, it was not a problem.

Been a couple of days now since you've made all the changes, and I haven't had any lag anymore. The forum's lightning fast for me now.

While I understand some members prefer the format of the Recent Posts section, the Unread and Replies buttons are the quickest and most concise way to review what's new since your last visit.

Not really. When you hit the unread button you get the unread threads displayed on your screen. Then you have to click a couple of times again and scroll before you're where you want. In the recent post section you get a link to the precise post and you jump there in one go, one click.

 

[nclemmons]

Alex

I may not understand your last point, but try this...

Set your logged in state to be persistent when you log in.  Click on the unread posts button from the main nav.  Then click on any 'new' green button by thread in the unread posts and it should take you right to the last post you read in that thread. 

That is personalized to your session, not general like the main screen at the bottom.

Neil

 

[sae]

I don't get it. It's just text. Links. They're not updated real time. How can that slow the forum down? Does it need and extensive database search or something?

I can tell you the difference between 0, 50, and 100 posts displaying on my forum (same software), although the hardware and software environments are different. I have less concurrent users (150 or so), but have about 1.5 million posts, and I'm on a shared server while Shane has mentioned this was on a dedicated. I'll run each 10x average the result.

With 0 posts showing, "Page created in 0.045 seconds with 8.1 queries."
With 50 posts showing on the bottom, the average nearly triples to 0.013, with the queries going up to 9.2.
With 100 posts, it's quadruple the original to 0.201, basically the same number of queries as 50 posts.

As you can imagine, as your volume increases, response time gets exponentially slower with multiple requests to the same hardware (if you've ever written two files at once on your computer, it's not just double the time required, it's more like 2.5x to account for the overhead switching between the two data streams). Now try reading/writing 300 at once. So what was .04 seconds becomes maybe .1 seconds with load, but .2 seconds will become 5 seconds as you approach the limitations of your system and what was concurrent before becomes lots of queuing.

Each row for each post as you see, requires pulling back rows from two tables and matching them together (you'll see that it shows which thread it originates from, which is stored in another table). Additionally, the actual page page creation time for each post is probably a small fraction of the total server response time, but note that each requires a date/time calculation for each instance you see a date/time since it is calculated based on what you input as your time zone.

 

[Rick Christopherson]

One of the nice things about the recent posts section is that you can see which threads are very active, versus a thread with just a single new posting. For example, even if a thread title doesn't normally interest me, if there is suddenly a dozen new postings in it, I'll check it out to see what suddenly became so interesting. That is a feature that viewing unread threads doesn't fit.

 

[peter halle]

As a member and a moderator I have always used the recent posts page numerous times a day just for the reasons Rick posted.  Makes life easier.

Peter