PHPBB keeps losing track of what I've seen

[Rick Denney]

Okay, I admit it. I read Tubenet while at work. That means that there will be three or four pages of undread threads on Monday morning. And it also means that I must interrupt my session occasionally to answer the phone, talk to the boss, or otherwise pretend to work.

When I come back after that hour-long surprise meeting, and I try to find Page 2 of unread messages (after having just worked my way through Page 3), I find that PHPBB has decided that enough time has passed with my "unread messages" screen displayed that I've seen everything, and I get a screen that says "No messages meet your search criteria". In other words, it thinks I've read everything.

This happened every time I tried to log in during my sabbatical. In the old forum, I kept track of where I was by asking my browser to color links I'd followed differently for 30 days. That way, I knew at a glance which messages I'd seen for longer than they would be available for viewing on the board.

I'm not, of course, asking for a return to the old board. But I'm wondering if there is a setting in PHPBB that would allow it to keep track of what I have not seen more accurately. I'm getting tired of it updating this arbitrarily in the middle of my session, because I miss a big share of the forum that way.

There is other forum software (FUDforum comes to mind) that maintains a precise database of what individual messages have been actually displayed, not just what messages were unread as off the last time the user happened to be logged in. Can PHPBB do the same?

Failing that, is there a way that I can view threads updated since, say, two or three days ago? Perhaps the last X number of messages posted? I can think of several workarounds. But if I get behind and can't catch up, I wait until I can set aside an hour before logging in again, and often that is a wait of several days. It's discouraging.

Rick "who finds this a problem in all forums that use PHPBB" Denney

[Joe Baker]

Rick, I know just what you mean; I do the same thing, with the same drawbacks. I've taken to bringing up the individual forums, ordered by last post, and scanning down 'til I see the last oldest one that I haven't seen, then working my way up.

Prompted to think about the problem again, though, I've just gone in and changed my browser settings to reload pages when the browser starts, rather than the nebulous "automatically". I'll post more info when I see how that works.
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Joe Baker, who can seldom read more than two or three threads in a session, but can leave his browser open for stinkin' ever.

[Joe Baker]

Nope. Didn't work.

It doesn't make too much difference for me, anyway. I prefer to tackle one forum at a time, so I just pick one, work my way through it, then pick another....
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Joe Baker, who would still prefer it if the system would leave posts there until I read them or dismiss them.

[WoodSheddin]

I get the same problem. I am unsure of the cause.