TexasCHLforum.com

Thanks, Chas. It shouldn't have any effect at all on the server.

Ah, that's the one, Chas. It's limiting a session ("visit") to one hour. A session begins when you log in, or it re-sets the timer if you post during an active session. If you post after the session expires, that also starts a new session, but anything that happened between expiration of the old session, and the beginning of the new, is in a sort of no-man's land.

Let me try to better describe how I've seen it affect my forum reading:

If I've been away from the forum for a couple of days, there will usually be 2-3 pages of "View new posts". I'll open each of those threads in a new tab, and start reading. Reading that many posts will often take an hour or more, especially since I'll typically be interrupted.

Let's say that I log in and "view new posts" at 4:00. I begin reading, and post a reply at 5:15, and continue reading. With interruptions for supper, email, whatever, I continue to read and post again at 6:30. I finally finish reading the forum and post a third time at 7:45, then close the browser window (which has been open since 4:00).

If I log in and "View new posts" at 9:00, phpBB should show every post that was made after 4:00, but it won't. It will only show new posts after 7:45. That's because the 4:00 session expired after an hour, and posting at 5:15 started a new session. New sessions also started at 6:30 and 7:45, and "View new posts" only show posts that are new since the beginning of the last session.

Before I figured this out, I would be puzzled by posts that appeared in a thread, but which didn't show up as "new". Now it's a little irritating, but I know how to minimize the problem.

One downside I forgot to mention when you have a lot of posts to read... phpBB decides that you're done visiting after an arbitrary period of time has passed (which is the root cause of the problem). If you post a reply after that time, it will get counted as a new "visit". Any posts that were new between log-on and the "new visit" won't show up the next time you "view new posts".

No way around that that I know of. You can hedge it a bit by waiting to post until you're done reading.

This is one major complaint I've always had with phpBB. After some arbitrary time, it decides you've changed from an old visit, to a new one, even if you've stayed logged in the entire time. That's one reason I prefer SMF: it counts "last visit" as the last time you logged in to the forum.

ELB wrote:Is there a way I can avoid this happening? I suppose I could open each interesting looking thread in a new window, marching through the three pages of new posts ASAP, and then read thru all the open windows, but that seems sort of awkward. Is there a better way?

The better way is to use a tabbed browser (preferably Firefox). When you first go to the "View new posts" listing and there is more than one page, immediately wheel-click on the additional pages, to open them in new tabs. Then work your way through those pages, wheel-clicking on the items you want to read, which will open those topics in new tabs.

Then read away, closing each tab as you finish, and the next is already open and waiting on you.

Kevin