Curious about forum functions...

I’m curious about the reasons behind the forum pages not auto-updating to push the most recently commented-upon thread to the top of the topic index. I think this is perhaps the first forum I’ve become a member for that doesn’t do that.

-nihil

Okay… I’m starting to think I’m feeding a troll here, but anyway…
within a forum, the individual topics do in fact reorder with the most recently commented first. The forums themselves do not reorder and are in a constantly predictable order (except when the administrators decided they wanted a new “Story Challenges” forum). This is how I’ve seen all other message board software work.

I have found the issue, JayMan, and I disapprove of, and do not respect at all your belittling me and insinuation that I am a “troll.” You, sir/ma’am, are too quick to judge people, and should check yourself. >:(

For the record, this confusion is, in fact, resulting of the method in which the message-board is laid out:

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See the circled red area. On all other forums which I frequent, this area where you see “previous/next” pushes you from page to page within the topic you are currently viewing. That is to say: If viewing “I love this game!” and you click the “next” button you are pushed to the next page within that same topic; “I love this game!”

However, on THIS message-board, when I click that button, it pushes me to the next TOPIC. This led to my confusion, because I pushed “next” and went to what I thought was the last page of “I love this game!” and was actually pushed to the thread re: errata’s. I clicked “post” so that I could add my two cents re: how much I enjoy this game, and actually ended up posting in the erratas thread. When I saw that “I love this game!” had not been pushed to the top of the discussion board, I assumed that the software was not pushing the topics last commented upon, hence my original post/thread.

So, yeah, don’t be a jerk. All forums function slightly differently.

-nihil

Well, in my defense, I stated an appearance, and never directly labelled you as anything. That, plus anyone who knows me knows I’m never really serious. In any case, I can easily see it taken as offensive, and thus I senserely apologize. What you point out, I’ll agree is confusing, and threw me off the first time I saw it as well. But that was well before I used these message boards. If a topic does have more than one page to it, there will be a list of numbers on the left side of the page. Those links in the right are for jumping to the next and previous topic. Really, I personally don’t use them and don’t really see a good enough use case to justify their inclusion, and would like to see them removed myself.

I have been on a few forums recently that have functioned the same way, and that threw me off at first as well. If it’s any consolation, we don’t really have any say over the setup of the page, it’s just a function of how the website works.

This is mock indignation, not real indignation, right?

I assumed the last bit was an Ice Cube reference with an unspoken “before you wreck yourself”…

If you guys have access to the files that make up the forum application iself, it should be simple to remove. Given that it’s a PHP application, each page template should be implemented as a SMARTY template. Just find the template for topic viewing and remove the two links. This shouldn’t cause any issues, as while the code will still push the links for the previous and next topics to the template, if the template doesn’t define them, they will be ignored. Though, as in all cases, one should test this in a non production environment before committing any changes. Of course, making any changes to a codebase means now one has created his own fork of the codebase, making it more difficult to apply an updated version, but given that templates are the most likely edited portion of a forum application (typically designed as separate themes to be installed) a change to a template shouldn’t cause too many difficulties.

That is unless you guys are using one of those site builders where you give them your domain name to point to their servers where they have applications already set up, giving you administrative access to the applications themselves, but no access to the files that make up the web applicatons themselves.

I can’t truly speak for them, but it seems like the effort-to-reward ratio on that is pretty unappealing. I could see that being addressed at some point if >G had a full-time website person on staff at some point, but right now, continuing to roll out more high-quality game content is probably taking higher priority…

Hmm… a potential for a full-time website person on staff?

I think that the salaries they’re prepared to offer right now are somewhere in the negative range… :stuck_out_tongue:

That requires the company making enough to pay the game makers first, rather than just sustain itself. (So basically I’m saying do what you’re already doing and talk the game up and get your friends to buy it and all that stuff :P)