Hey, Jag, I have a suggestion involving vBulletin... et al...

[Vin DSL]

The only reason I'm posting it here, instead of PMing you is because I've noticed that many, many, bulletin boards share this same 'problem'...

I don't know what your session length setting is -- I suspect around 3600 seconds --- but it's a major PITA for me, and probably others, whether they're aware of the situation, or not.

What's the 'problem' with 3600 seconds (1 hour)? Sometimes it takes me 1800 seconds (half-hour) to answer a question, then maybe 1800 seconds to answer a couple of more. Then, when I go to look at a 4th or 5th thread, or whatever, your timer gets me, i.e. my session time runs out, e.g. no more 'New Posts' threads are listed when I click the 'New Posts' link.

My philosophy is, 'New Posts' mean new to YOU, between your last logon and now, not new in the last 3600 seconds. Limiting the session length to 3600 seconds makes sense if you get 100s of posts an hour, like the Mozilla Support BBS does, but NOT on 99.999% of the rest of the web.

My suggestion is to change your session length to 28800 seconds (8 hours). That's what I do on all the boards I admin around the world, and it works great!

Anyway, you (and everyone else) might want to try this on YOUR bulletin board. It definitely makes visiting boards a more enjoyable experience, especially if you particiate in the threads, both for reading and posting messages.

[jason]

Good suggestion, Vin. I've run into this problem here as well--I'll start to research a complicated question and spend a considerable amount of time on it. The, by the time I get into the forums at the bottom of the list, nothing is marked as new anymore and I need to start backtracking based on date to see what I've missed.

This also happens when I'm away from a computer for more than 24 hours and I come back to see many, many new messages.

--Jason

[Ron]

I have similar problems with the phpBB highlighting scheme, although I have my session there set to 1 hour, the highlighting is maintained in a cookie and as long as you're active within the hour the session stays fresh.


What I do is open up a window and go through all the posts, opening a new window when I've found a post to which I'd like to respond. I leave the old window underneath and continue to browse in the manner until I've check out all the new posts.

Then I answer the open windows, then take a quick look around at the end to ensure I haven't missed any new posts.

Tedious, but effective.

[Vin DSL]

Tedious, but effective...

Yeah, there are workarounds, but why, you know? It's easier to just bump the session time up to provide some additonal breathing room, no?

That's why 'they' make it configurable...

[Ron]

Not a real reason, but the sessions table could overflow... need to bump that up accordingly.