Basically, with the current setting, the forum only considers your last login time when determining which threads/posts are "new" to you and "unread" by you. During your session, it uses a cookie to track what threads you have "read" during this session, and the "take me to first unread post" icon/link in each thread just goes to the oldest post since your previous login. The major downside to this is that if you don't read 100% of the new posts all in one session without hitting the session inactivity timeout, every time you login, then you basically lose track of what posts you have read and have not.
Starting with vBulletin 3.5, vBulletin can track all of this for you per user on the server and keep track of what threads/posts each user has read and hasn't, making the read/unread indicators and the "take me to the first unread post" icons/links actually work accurately and correctly. This is probably explained better by vBulletin staff, stolen from http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=138544 > > Database-Based Thread and Forum Read Marking > > Yes, it's finally here! Now, instead of using cookies and inactivity > timeouts to determine what should be considered unread versus read, you > can now opt to track this via the database. > > Individual threads are considered read only if you have actually read > them. Also, as soon as you have read all threads in a forum, it's light > bulb will go out; no need to visit the forum list! > > Of course, it's also an option. Should you wish to stick with the > original system, you'll be able to do so. > Yes, it does take slightly more resources on the forum server to enable it, but in my experience, it isn't much and really improves the user experience. -- jsharper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ jsharper's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9295 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=45929 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
