Disappearing threads

"Which subscribing to would solve"

I'm probably being thick, but I'm not seeing how, unless you mean that "Default Thread Subscription Mode" would need to be off?

If I subscribe to a thread, or if I reply to it, the thread is added to my "Subscribed threads" [because I have automatic thread subscription turned on for any threads that I reply to].

That gives me a deluge of emails, most of which are for threads that are flagged with and thus I will most probably see them anyway.

So maybe if I turned OFF the automatic subscription and only used Subscription for things that I was especially interested in, then any alerting email I got would be both rare and helpful?

Or am I missing a more useful method of tracking (which doesn't suffer from being overloaded by the stuff I have replied to)?

 

:thumb:

 

I'll give that a try ans report back. With the benefit of hindsight I don't actually think that atuomatic subscriptions achieves any extra benefit

 

This issue is largely down to the set-up of your email account. For instance, my email is set to check for new emails every five minutes but if I remember correctly, the default is actually 10 minutes so that would account for why your email notification is tardy.

To alter that, go into "options" in Microsoft Outlook (sorry, don't use Outlook Express but must be something similar) and do as follows



As for the question of thread subscriptions, when you choose to have them switched on, you can also choose to have "email notifications" or "no email notifications".

Then the question of the New Posts feature;
This is a one hit option. Once you've opened it, it assumes you've visited all the threads listed and doesn't present them again. It's nothing to do with anything being wrong, that's the way it works and the way it works on every other vB forum I visit.

However, to overcome this, as I have to visit posts on a couple of other fora I admin on, I open the page and if there is more than one, I right click on each of the other numbers in turn and choose "open in a new tab" which is much the same thing as you did by forward to each page and then back clicking.

But then, to keep it 'alive' right click on the "last post made by" button and again choose "open in a new tab". Then when you've read and/or posted as you will, close the tab and return to the new posts list. The last place right clicked on is highlighted or the has a faint, red dotted line around it so you'll always know where you were last.

Well, Kristen, I shall say it yet one more time - this system is broke!

When we moved it over to vB, the servers that were so full of **** that they could cope with GC and would do a sterling job, let us down badly and if all fell apart. Some of the data was lost, if you recall.

Richard was then helping us out as a coder/ advisor but he was doing that for free and now has a lot of business to cope with. He's just not got the time to deal with it anymore. Therefore, we don't have a grade A coder at our disposal. What's wrong with GC was the result of a bad accident and totally unforseen. It would take a Grade A coder ages to work through everything and find what was wrong much less figure out how to put it right. It would be tantamount to working through a set of the London telephone directories to find maybe a dozen telephone numbers to correct!! And to pay a professional like Richard to do it would cost something in four figures now!

So sorry, you're quite right about holding your breath but it's not because we're not interested or concerned, it's because we (Nathan, Stu and I) are not coders and can't do it ourselves, plain and simple.

Ever so sorry and all that but .....

 

Thanks for your frank reply Daisees. Much appreciated.

I think it would be better if you moved to the vB option for read mails being logged by the system, but its anyone's guess what the side effects would be, and it would only be wise to do it with a Grade A Coder on hand

I'm here because I like this community. I looked around thoroughly before deciding where to put my shovel to lean on

I think this is a particularly good resource. I make a conscious effort to "put something back" on the internet, being a "taker" in most of my browsing, and your forum represents an opportunity for me to help some others, as well as chatting with interesting folk.

But now I'm here I'd like it to succeed, survive, and be a best-of-breed

I reckon that you guys need a Grade A Coder to be able to sort the system out, on the one hand, and to be a resource if you hit a snag or wanted to upgrade / move server etc.

I wonder how you could get such an individual? (I see myself as a Grade A Coder, but I don't have the time and vB is completely out of my realms of expertise, my day job is building large shopping cart sites). I could help in a peripheral way though - for example if you were setting up a test site and needed techie people to review its behaviour, or wanted another set of eyes on anything, or someone to bounce future IT plans off and so on.

Could you raise funds? This whole "Free" thing always bothers me. Nothing is free. You don't get Free minutes on your phone ... Free phone upgrades ... that just marketing babble.

I wonder if the advertising thing raises much (rhetorical question only!).

I wonder what appetite there would be for a voluntary subscription. Worked well for Wikipedia £10 (seems reasonable) from 100 people (might just be possible) is only £1,000. Getting 1,000 people to subscribe seems implausibly large to me, but maybe not? £1,000 doesn't go far in the way of IT things - probably a couple of days IT support, not even enough for a rollout of a new version I expect. £10,000 would definitely fix it. Somewhere in the middle is probably the answer.

Sponsorship? Some famous brand, garden centre, whatever providing an annual fee which covered the IT costs - more if you can get it, you guys should have a paid-for knees-up if the budget would stretch.

I used the site CloudyNights.com when I first got interested in astronomy (its a great forum, like this one :thumb and they were sponsored by a telescope company. Very non intrusive, 3 or 4 e-mailings a year IIRC. A little text piece on the home page explaining the arrangement (no banner ads on every page like one of your competitors - you know the one!!)

Have your own banner ad? "Could you manage the IT of this web site for us?" Mail everyone registered and ask them?

But I expect you've considered all those, and followed all the routes that you could. Happy to help if I can though.

 

Thanks, Kristen. Will certainly bring this thread to Nathan's attention.

 

:cnfs:

 

I'm no A grade coder but have worked with all the major forum softs over the last ten years, I've also customised them as required with my own coding. I'm no pro and work at my own speed in my own way, but I can take a look if you like. Pm me if your interested. No charges.

Steve...

 

Subscribing to threads doesn't solve the original problem I mentioned though, which was that if you hit 'New Posts', but don't have time to go through them all, then when you come back later most will have dissappeared. You may not have replied to them at that point, so subscribing won't help. If you have replied, they are easy to find if you just go to Advanced Search and then put your username in.

 

Just to sound like a broken record...I'm still having to log in each time I come to visit. Yes, I'm using the "remember me" tick box...but at least I can use the same password now, without having to ask for a new one each time. Phew!

 

Notwithstanding the fact that implementing chagnes to the Forum are difficult without suitable resources I registered on the vBulletin support site to see how things work with the "Remember what individual members read" system option turned on.

And then I found this in their FAQ:

"The administrator can also set up the forums so that each thread you read is marked in the database. If this option is set, then new threads (or threads with new posts) will not be marked as read until you have actually read them.


There is a built-in time limit to this, however, that will automatically mark all threads as 'read' after a set number of day, whether you really have read them or not. The default setting is 10 days, but the administrator could make this higher or lower."


I reckon a slightly longer time limit (14 days plus a bit) would allow for folk that went on holiday.


But other than that it would be a great enhancement for me.


After I registered on the vB forum their New Posts list does only shows things that I have not read. So I can read something, press New Posts again, and I now have a list of everything still unread. I would give it an A* (Whereas here they remain on the New posts list but are (most of the time) lo-lighted once I have read them)

 

What Kristen said sounds ideal to me.

 

Subscribing and using the New Posts feature have nothing to do with one another so don't expect any 'miracles' there! :wink:

The trick is not to close the New Posts page once you've opened it. Do as I suggested - right click on the last post arrow and choose "open in New Tab".

Got a link to that thread, Kristen?


You all might also like to know that I've had a word with Nathan and he's going to chat with Richard to see if he'll come over and get this sorted. If I can see that thread, perhaps he (or even me!) might be able to do that. Interesting - and I know another forum (or two) I would do it on!