Distinguish between read and un-read discussions/forums.

Hi,
I have just worked out why the last post link doesn't work for me.

We have lots of sub forums.

Our organised structure means that the last post only works for a particular topic in one of the sub forums.

I have been playing with this for the last 24 hours and by using that link I'm assuming I have visited the discussion when in fact I have only visited the latest topic in one of the sub forums and missed all the fact that there are ather topics and other forums with topics that have been updated.

This was initially confusing as it doesn't make sense to have an indicator at forum/subforum level but the last post link does appear at these levels.

I have come to the conclusion that relying on a link colour change is relying on one function to do 2 different jobs and that those jobs sometimes conflict.

If there is anything at all that you can come up with along the lines of icons rather rapidly it would be really really appreciated and I will gladly help with anything appropriate.

Thankyou

James

I would strongly recommend you try a different format for your forum.

Take a look at this "Mixed" format, used by this Nabble forum http://n2.nabble.com/As-The-World-Turns---Fan-Message-Board-f473519.html

It shows the subforums and the latest 6 topics within each sub-forum.

A lot of our advanced users find this formats more useful than the typical phpBB format - it gives more exposure to what's in your forum. Plus, it solves the problem you pointed out.

To make the change, go to each forum and click "Options->Change forum format", then choose the "Mixed view" format.

phpBB format has this bloadted 3-level structure which you probably don't need. so, you can also move a grand-child forum to the child position to be directly under your top level forum. This is the cataloging feature that Nabble has - so that you can move stuff around easily. And of course, you can remove and delete empty forums/subforums.

Let me know if you need any help doing this.

Thank you.

That may well be the right solution for us.

It's going to take me a little while to sort this though as I have just identified a huge security hole that is extremely urgent.

I don't want to post this publicly and would be grateful if you could contact me privately.

I'm going to post another topic on this so we don't get off topic here.

Even without changing the forum format, if you click on "Topics View" it will list all topics in all subforums, ordered by last post date. Then one can use the color of the last post link to see which topics have unread posts, does that work for you?

Thankyou Tomi.

A good suggestion but it doesn't solve the problem.

It was pointed out that we would be better using a mixed format board.

I thought that was what we had done as this is the format that we used when we created a test forum.
My mistake as this was over looked when we set this forum up.

The problem with your suggestion is that it may well work for me if I liked that way but members will use whatever viewing options are best suited to them.

It's a consistency issue.

With 25 forums in total and currently over 400 posts a day with only 20% of our membership moved across it is a problem that is only going to escalate.
The forum has to be 100% spot on for everyone and all new topics should be easily identifiable in whatever form you have your view settings set to.

Hope that makes sense.

Will - Would it be possible for you to talk me through exporting the current forum in it's entirety?

I would like to set up a testing forum so I can play with the different formats and check out the consequences before applying changes to the "live" forum?

Hope that makes sense

Sorry, we don't have this feature to duplicate a forum.

Also, I don't quite understand. To test different formats, you can simply create a dummy forum with some dummy post and try stuff out, there is no harm to us in having dummy posts and throw-away stuff.  To do this, you can create a new user account, try it out, then delete that user account entirely.

Will,
Have you seen the size of our forum?
That's a lot of extra work.
To create just a couple of hundred posts to get minimal replication and sample of data in each forum is beyond my capacity at the moment as I am flat out with other issues.

A replication for testing option would be a great feature to have at some point in the future.

Thanks

James

The main point of testing is that you get a feel of how it works. Once you get a feel how it works, you can pick a time when the forum usage is low and make the changes. Don't delete or remove anything, just move things around and change formats, then nothing will be lost. Sorry we just don't have that replication feature.

Subject: colours as the sole means of distinction between unread and read

The use of colour alone, to distinguish, may be insufficient.

Without wishing to side-track this discussion into the Chandler Project area, I draw attention to just one screen shot <http://chandlerproject.org/pub/Projects/ProductTour/mac_triagelist.png> in which a blue circled icon of some sort appears alongside any note that is unread.

A click on the note is followed by a dimming/disappearance of its blue blob.

(Within the blue circle: a range of icons may appear <http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/DashboardIcons> but that's off-topic from Nabble.)

An improvement suggestion, I don't suppose it'll be done right first time but here goes:

* alongside each unread message in Nabble, have a blue hint of some sort

* hint disappears shortly after the message has been clicked/read

* whilst the messages may be staggered (in threaded view), the column of blue hints is never staggered.

vames wrote

pagination links I think is likely to cause further confusion

I have used Nabble for a long time but still, frequently, I find myself confused by searching for but not finding a word whilst in Classic view.

IMHO classic view should default to comprehensive, not paginated.

Any concerns regarding load/performance may be mitigated by a dialogue that hints/suggests a switch to list/threaded view. (Think: something like the 'Are you a subscriber?' dialogue.)

Grahame,
That looks like a neat solution.
I fear that it will fall on deaf ears though.
I'm having great difficulty getting Nabble to recognise that there is an issue here.
Tis such a shame.

hi James,

If you want the icon indicator in your forum, copy the CSS code below and paste it in the "Options > Change appearance" screen:

.wide-table a:link,
.narrow-table a:link,
.child-table a:link
{
    background: url('/images/icon_next.png') no-repeat;
    padding-left: 15px;
} 
td.avatarA a:link,
td.avatarB a:link,
a.category-subject:link {
    background: none;
    padding-left:0;
}

Note that you can change the icon by editing the URL of the image.
For example, you can upload the icon to your forum description and use the URL of that image in the CSS code.

Please let me know if this solution works better.

Regards,
Hugo Teixeira
Nabble.com

Hi Hugo.
I am trying this now.

Thankyou so much for this

James

OK
I've had a play and it's definitely an improvement, thank you very much.

It's still not right for the structure that we use though, having said that it was recommended that we switch to a mixed format view forum.

The mixed format was always the intended format for our forum and I want to change to this format. It was overlooked when we set it up.

It was mentioned that if we swirched to the mixed format option that we might need to move things around a little and help in doing this was offered.
Before I go playing with changing the structure and messing everything up I would be gratefull if you could tell me of any issues that you think we might come up against by doing this.

Thankyou

Hugo, many thanks for the CSS and hints.

For me, so much better!