I was refering to the "full post tracking" feature in particular, actually - the one that tells you how many posts are new since your last visit to a topic when you look at postlist.

It's simply too hard on the database. Our goal with the new product is to take as much work away from the database as possible.

In Classic, there is no tracking at all, as you'd know it. Every time you visit the board, a cookie is set with the current timestamp, and the previous value of that timestamp is remembered as a session cookie. That cookie is then used to light up the bulbs and folders when there's content newer than the date present. There's no tracking of individual threads, no remembering where you left off and taking you there, etc.

It's really rather inconvenient. We also don't think it would fly in the new product either, as it takes away too many features that people really find useful.

The concept I outlined above is a good middle ground. It still makes topic-level new post tracking possible, without thrashing the database.

We might make it a little smarter and make it all per-forum instead of board-wide, like Classic. In that case, we would still need to store last read dates in the database, but a once-per-forum check once every session really woudln't be so bad.

See? This is why I said it's TBD. <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Have any easy to answer questions, mabye? Hehe....


Charles Capps
Former UBB.classic Maintainer