Feature requests, bug reports, etc

Wait, what? You removed unread?

Wait, what? You removed unread?

No it's still there, but only shows up if you actually have any unread posts.

I made some suggestions on the previous page also, don't know if you saw them.

(Btw: the post you just made didn't show up in my unread topics. In fact the unread button didn't either)

I made some suggestions on the previous page also, don't know if you saw them.(Btw: the post you just made didn't show up in my unread topics. In fact the unread button didn't either)

Interesting. You still don't get an unread notice?

I support this button. The interface is harder to use as it is now. I'm probably never headed back that way unless its easier to use. There should also be some way to see how many people have voted, and maybe an ability to comment on the polls. On the "biggest prick" poll I wanted to comment to say that it was lacking Mourinho as an example.

The reason I made the polls the way they are is because I wanted them to feel almost standalone, and to be an introduction to Arsenal Report that looks slick and interesting. Most users viewing a poll would be non-members coming from say Reddit or Twitter, so I wanted a little wow-factor going so we can get more users in here!

Regarding comments on polls, that is coming soon. I just wanted to code them quickly and get them up there first, then we can expand its functionality. The back button is in there now if you've voted.

I would also like that the button to the "unread posts"-page should be clickable even if there are no unread posts.

It would be pointless, as it would be an empty page. You can still bookmark it though, if that's what you want (/unread). I used to have the unread page as my starter page, but now my starter page is /news - it has all the info I need.

My last request is that the "newest" page has an option to sort both in newest topics and in newest comments. I have trouble finding back to topics I've used earlier once I have exited them.

Newest page is gone (or well...you can still find it over at /newest, for now), the idea is that /discussions will be the one place for forum threads. Sorting options coming soon.

I made some suggestions on the previous page also, don't know if you saw them.(Btw: the post you just made didn't show up in my unread topics. In fact the unread button didn't either)

Ooo actually I think I know what this is. Every day at 3am there's a background process running to clean up the unread markers, as they're taking up a lot of space in the database. I didn't think it was erasing all of them, which it probably does. I'll look into doing this once a week instead.

It would be pointless, as it would be an empty page. You can still bookmark it though, if that's what you want (/unread). I used to have the unread page as my starter page, but now my starter page is /news - it has all the info I need.

I wouldn't say it would be a pointless button. I would click it every now and then to check for new content (since the page doesn't auto refresh, and I don't use F5 that frequently, any button that can refresh the page is better than the buildt-in browser-refresh button). And to be fair, I'd much rather have that button than an auto updating page (those are sometimes annoying).

In my opinion it is more pointless to remove the button as it could just as well be there (maybe grayed out or something) ;)

Interesting. You still don't get an unread notice? I got notices for theese posts

Ooo actually I think I know what this is. Every day at 3am there's a background process running to clean up the unread markers, as they're taking up a lot of space in the database. I didn't think it was erasing all of them, which it probably does. I'll look into doing this once a week instead.

Hmm... This unread topic hassle seems extremely complex at the moment. Are you considering rebuilding it from the bottom if you come up with easier ways to do it? Or are you just trying to improve on the current system?

I wouldn't say it would be a pointless button. I would click it every now and then to check for new content (since the page doesn't auto refresh, and I don't use F5 that frequently, any button that can refresh the page is better than the buildt-in browser-refresh button). And to be fair, I'd much rather have that button than an auto updating page (those are sometimes annoying). In my opinion it is more pointless to remove the button as it could just as well be there (maybe grayed out or something) ;)

What I mean is, there is no purpose to have a visible link that leads to an empty state. You can always just go to /unread, it still works...but since it's completely empty, no need to link to it unless there is actually something there.

Hmm... This unread topic hassle seems extremely complex at the moment. Are you considering rebuilding it from the bottom if you come up with easier ways to do it? Or are you just trying to improve on the current system?

We had a custom built system before, which wasn't scalable. I then switched to a ready made solution recently, which works better. In addition, I've added a clean up process - this was probably the reason for you missing unread notices.

I think we still need a better solution. Right now a brand new member would get 260+ posts marked as unread, which isn't ideal. I think the best scenario in the future is that you only get unread notices on threads you've actually participated in, or subscribed to - similar to how Facebook works.

The way some forums do it is by making all posts prior to your registration date marked as read, and any new activity after that is unread.

The way some forums do it is by making all posts prior to your registration date marked as read, and any new activity after that is unread.

Yeah that's easy enough, just trigger a mark read upon registration...but I wonder how others handle the actual read marks. To me it's completely unscalable creating a view every time someone visits a thread. Right now it's fine, but let's say we have 200 members and 1,000 threads in a few months...that's 200,000 database entries just to handle what is unread or not.

esreality.com has the best thread/unread comments system I have seen. It tells you the number of unread posts in a thread and unread posts are highlighted with a different background colour. The site was massive at one stage and has been around for 15 years or so with the same system so it cant be too taxing.

esreality.com has the best thread/unread comments system I have seen. It tells you the number of unread posts in a thread and unread posts are highlighted with a different background colour. The site was massive at one stage and has been around for 15 years or so with the same system so it cant be too taxing.

Yeah that's ideally how I'd want it to work as well, but I can imagine the difference being that their server costs were probably on a whole different tier than ours. The problem isn't that it can't be done, it's all just a matter of how much resource there is available.

I'm still looking into it, I'll have a good system working soon I just need to make the right decision that will scale if people start pouring in.

This is how I've seen it done before...

Two models:

Topic(id: integer, name: string, created_at: datetime, updated_at: datetime etc...)

TopicView(id: integer, topic_id: integer, user_id: integer, created_at: datetime, updated_at: datetime)

When a user visits a topic a new TopicView record gets created specific to the topic_id and user_id combination.

If they've already visited the topic the TopicView record for that topic_id/user_id combination gets updated (updated_at field).

You can then check which topics are 'unread' for a user by comparing the updated_at datetimes on the TopicView and the Topic records. Additionally, filter out topics that have an updated_at datetime older than the user's created_at datetime.

LOL

Or pack it in and become a goat farmer?

ps. SEO friendly URLs for polls and players would be sassy.

This is how I've seen it done before...Two models:Topic(id: integer, name: string, created_at: datetime, updated_at: datetime etc...)TopicView(id: integer, topic_id: integer, user_id: integer, created_at: datetime, updated_at: datetime)

This is what I had before, but isn't it extremely database-heavy? I'm far from a Rails expert, but as far as I can tell, using the system of a unique view per thread per user means we'll have huge amounts of database rows?

500 users * 1,000 discussion threads = 500,000 topic views = £1bn per second hosting costs. ;)

And if I clean them up once a week say, everything will now become unread for everyone.

Using this at the moment: https://github.com/ledermann/unread, which I think works similarly.

SEO friendly URLs for polls and players would be sassy.

Yup, definitely.

Well it wouldn't be 1,000 topic views per user... I assume you'd only create the record if the topic had been viewed.

Might be more like 500 users * 100 topic views per average user = 50,000 records. But I get where you're going... it could create a huge number of rows in the long term.

I have a database table with 75 million rows in and it performs ok on these kind of joins.

That gem looks good. There's a little mention of performance "Hint: You should add a database index on messages.created_at"

There's a little mention of performance "Hint: You should add a database index on messages.created_at"

Yeah I have yet to figure out how to add indexes on already made attributes. I know how to do it when creating them (user_id:integer:index, etc).

Well it wouldn't be 1,000 topic views per user... I assume you'd only create the record if the topic had been viewed.

Yes, but...if someone marks all posts as read, a view would be created for every post in history, I assume?

Yes, but...if someone marks all posts as read, a view would be created for every post in history, I assume?

Fair point

Yeah I have yet to figure out how to add indexes on already made attributes. I know how to do it when creating them (user_id:integer:index, etc).

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15881749/adding-index-after-adding-column-rails