"New Posts" search

[peterhr]

I get an email informing me that a thread I have updated (I hesitate to use contributed to ) has been updated, but if I click 'New Posts' (top left of page) - the thread isn't mentioned. I have to pick it up from the emailed link.

Am I imagining this or has anyone else noticed it?

[Oblivian]

Works on cookies. If you were visiting the forum before the email arrived, it will then be flagged as 'read' already. The direct link always goes to the referred post, the 'new posts' goes to ones that have not got the current cookie timestamp

[peterhr]

Can't be on cookies, if it was

(1) you wouldn't have to 'log into the forums' to see new posts
(2) the new posts list would be different if you used different browsers or computers (Firefox might have a 3 day old cookie while Chrome has 2 hour old cookie)

It must be done with a 'when there was last forum activity' timestamp on the logon account - the activity would be a logon or a read a post (writing a post is followed by a read that shows you what was wrote).

There's something wrong with this version of the forum software to do with maintaining the timestamps (could be a setting?), my guess is the timestamp is updated when the account record is accessed by the process that sends the mail alert.

[Oblivian]

.. serverside PHP cookie or similar, yes

New posts works when you aren't logged in. It just shows all posts in chronological order.

Any missing ones are easy enough to identify. Hit the show last 24hr ones and any you don't recognise are new