Some current forum issues

[Dan Lyke]

Two things which are preventing me from experiencing the forum in its fullest glory:

• "Show unread posts since last visit" is broken and has been for at least a few days
• The RSS feed only shows the last 5 posts at the time of the poll, which means that it only catches everything if there haven't been more than 5 posts since my last poll (I just changed from every 3 hours to every 30 minutes), and only if I leave my computer on all the time.

Anyone got suggestions? I wish SMF (the forum software) had an email or news gateway...

 

[ejantny]

My last post function is working properly.

With message boards cookies are usually the culprit when problems occur.

Try logging out and then close your browser then restart the browser and log in. You may have to manually delete the cookies.

Another thing to try is clearing your browser's cache.

 

[Matthew Schenker]

"Show unread posts since last visit" is broken and has been for at least a few days

This function works for me.  But I'd like to know if anyone else has had this problem?

The RSS feed only shows the last 5 posts at the time of the poll, which means that it only catches everything if there haven't been more than 5 posts since my last poll (I just changed from every 3 hours to every 30 minutes), and only if I leave my computer on all the time.

Unfortunately, the RSS feed in the forum only allows five posts to go to your news reader at a time.  I am currently looking into ways to increase this number.

Matthew

 

[Greg B]

Oddly enough, the "Show unread posts,..." works great on my work desktop machine and not at all on my laptop.

Greg B

 

[Dan Lyke]

And right now it just worked for me.

 

[Daviddubya]

...But I'd like to know if anyone else has had this problem?...
Matthew

Matthew - Unless something has changed, "Show unread posts..." has never worked reliably for me.  See:
http://festoolownersgroup.com/index.php?topic=91.0

I just tried it again, and it showed no unread posts and there are at least a dozen.

I have stopped trying to use it, and I just go the the list of recent posts at the bottom of the Home page.

 

[Corwin]

Hasn't been working for me either.  The Unread Posts button did work some of the time a while ago.  Usually just displays screen with no results.

 

[Matthew Schenker]

I've got a message in to the SMF team to see about this.  I'll report back a bit later.

 

[Matthew Schenker]

Everyone,
I just checked with the SMF team.  The settings for "Show unread posts since last visit" are global, meaning they work the same way for all members.  So, if some people are receiving all the posts and others are not, it is likely a local setting on your browser.

Two likely causes:
If you have cookies turned off or limited in your browser, this will limit or refuse the "Show unread posts" feature.
If you log in quickly, the logged out, your "last visit" may not be what you're expecting.

Please check these things on your system.

Thanks,
Matthew

 

[Dan Lyke]

Matthew, my experience is that it sometimes does and sometimes doesn't. The last two times I've tried, it has. The 5 times before that, it didn't, but before that it usually worked.

I'll go see if I can figure out how this is implemented so I can get a better idea of what might be going wrong in between the browser and the software.

 

[Matthew Schenker]

Dan,
I have heard from the developers that it can't work sometimes and not others.  This issue has come up in hundreds of other forums, and it seems to always come down to local settings.
But if we discover something odd, I'd love to know what it is.  Please check your settings and report back.
Thanks,
Matthew

 

[Matthew Schenker]

Everyone,
I just figured out how to upgrade the number of RSS feeds.

I have reconfigured the forum to feed 50 posts to your news reader.  Tell me if this is sufficient.

Thanks,
Matthew

 

[Dan Lyke]

Hmmm...  just hit me: Perhaps the RSS poll is resetting the last visit information? Since my web browser and my RSS reader are the same application, it's possible that the RSS poll is sending my authentication cookies...

Oh, and the new RSS feed is awesome ;D, except that I got dupes of the last 50 messages . But I'll get over that. 

 

[Matthew Schenker]

Dan,
Glad to hear you like the RSS feeds.  I'm glad I finally figured out how to improve that feature of the forum.
The duplicate listings should be gone by the next time you sign in.
Thanks,
Matthew

 

[Daviddubya]

...Two likely causes:
If you have cookies turned off or limited in your browser, this will limit or refuse the "Show unread posts" feature.
If you log in quickly, the logged out, your "last visit" may not be what you're expecting.

Please check these things on your system.

Thanks,
Matthew

Matthew - The last few times I checked the forum, I looked at the "Show unread posts..." log.  It showed several posts on two occasions and none just now.  I did not try to determine if the number of posts it showed were correct, but at least it showed some.  Just now, when I logged in and it showed no new posts, I checked the recent posting list on the Home page.  There were at least 6 new posts.

My "settings" don't change.  Cookies are enabled and set to "Medium" security level.

I stay logged in to the forum, i.e. I do not log out and log in each time I visit the forum.  I simply exit the forum by going to another web site, or closing IE.  Whenever I arrive at the forum, I am already logged in..  I never check "Show unread posts.." if I happen to return to the forum shortly after leaving.

IMHO, the problem is in some software, not in individual computer settings.  Too many people are experiencing unreliable results, which points to a common problem.

ps - Just checked into the forum again several hours after my prior visit.  The "Show unread posts" shows no new posts.  There are at least 8 new posts in the recent posts list on the Home page since my last visit.  I hope I made my point - the feature does not work reliably.  Thanks.

 

[ejantny]

If you show let's say five new posts then log out and log right back in all the posts previously shown will not be there.
Same thing if you are idle for more than 60 minutes and the system shows you are off line or you close your browser then restart it. The new posts start from the current session when you login or are automatically logged in via a cookie.

I'm not real used to SMC, mostly Vbulletin but they seem very similar the way they function.

 

[TheTassieBFG]

Sorry to resurrect a dead post but thought i would throw in my two pennies worth. At one stage soon after signing up I thought no one used this site.. I had used the "login forever" with firefox accepting cookies fromhttp://festoolownersgroup.com and never saw a new message.. it wasn't till about a month later i decided to check the individual forums that i realised my computer(laptop) wasn't recognising things. I have since started to only log in for an hour each time i visit.

The reason I am adding this is I finally got around to checking to see if others had had a similar issue. and this seemed to be the most recent thread.

love the forum and am glad it is used more than i initially thought

Cheers from the land of Oz

TheTassieBFG