Read and Unread Posts

[boatbuilder]

Unlike the LOL site, I have noticed on this site that if you have been off line or inactive for a period of time and several people have posted replies in one particular topic before you come back on line and you then go to view your 'unread posts' you are taken to the most recent post in that topic when you click on the link in 'unread posts' rather than the first one that you have not read.

This could mean that you may miss these earlier posts unless you scroll up the page or even go back a page to check if there are any posts you don't recall reading. That happened a few days ago for me and I have only just seen the earlier posts in that topic, quite by chance.

I decided to have a look through this site's settings and I believe I may have found out where the problem lay so I have made a change to the settings to see if it makes a difference. Initially I noticed that it has made a difference by showing a lot of posts in my 'unread posts' list that I had previously read. However I believe that the change I made - which now relies on your own 'cookies' to keep track of where you were up to in the reading of posts rather than the server keeping track - will solve the problem. Only time will tell on this and I will have to wait until there has been more than one post in a particular topic that I have not read.

In the meantime you may have suddenly found yourselves that your own 'unread posts' list will be displaying posts that you have already read. You can of course get rid of them all in one go by clicking on the link 'Mark Forums Read' which is located near the top right on the Board Index page.

I hope I have explained this clearly and I will report back on this when I have proof that what I have done actually works as I hope it will.

Thanks for your patience and my apologies for any inconvenience this may cause you at the outset.

[boatbuilder]

Further to the above, I have now been able to determine that it did not solve the problem I hoped it would. In actual fact it led to another problem if you also happened to use two different devices for viewing the forum at different times such as a laptop and a tablet. When you moved to the second device you would have found that posts you had read on the first device would show up as unread on the second device.

I have therefore reverted to the original setting and once again apologise if you suddenly find that when viewing the 'unread posts' list you initially get a number of posts showing that you have previously read. You can get rid of them in one go by taking the same action as I described in the previous post.

In the meantime you may have suddenly found yourselves that your own 'unread posts' list will be displaying posts that you have already read. You can of course get rid of them all in one go by clicking on the link 'Mark Forums Read' which is located near the top right on the Board Index page.

Thanks.