Slightly irritating site problems

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MikeT
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Slightly irritating site problems

Post by MikeT »

I've suffered this a fair while but being unable to diagnose it has kept me quiet for a while.

Still not sure but I now think it could either be a site issue or a side-effect of my ISP StalkStalk replaying my web browsing requests.

The first problem I have is that if I visit this site and have to leave before reading all new posts (or marking them as read), I find those posts are no longer shown as new or something has flagged them as read on my next visit. As a result, I (too often) miss new posts.

A less frequent but nonetheless equally frustrating problem is sometimes I find I have to manually log in and when I do, all posts are marked as read, including new ones.

Anyone else notice similar?
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spider
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Post by spider »

Not really no.

The only thing I have noticed is occasionally I am logged out (and yes, I did check the box to remember it)

Speculation: Probably due to having to manually empty the sessions table (or via cron) every few days, although this is much preferable to said table crashing, they are best as memory / heap anyway as its temporary.

Oops too much information ? :oops:
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Re: Slightly irritating site problems

Post by Paul-R »

MikeT wrote:The first problem I have is that if I visit this site and have to leave before reading all new posts (or marking them as read), I find those posts are no longer shown as new or something has flagged them as read on my next visit. As a result, I (too often) miss new posts.
This doesn't sound unusual to me. Your visiting of the site resets the cookie and after a certain time (settable on some sites but probably not this one) - usually 15 - 20 mins - a forum action will generate a new cookie.
MikeT wrote:A less frequent but nonetheless equally frustrating problem is sometimes I find I have to manually log in and when I do, all posts are marked as read, including new ones.
It's not something I experience here as I usually don't find myself logged out but it does happen to me on another forum.
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MikeT
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Post by MikeT »

spider wrote:The only thing I have noticed is occasionally I am logged out (and yes, I did check the box to remember it)

Are "new posts" still preserved for you when this happens? All of them? It's difficult to determine unless you go through each category checking post date/times or have a remarkable memory.

I too have the Always Signed-in Option checked, always have but only the last year or so have I begun experiencing these problems. The Manual Log-in issue often correlates with the browser stalling for a minute or two before opening the site, which is also a relatively new occurence (but not limited to this site - hence my suspicion extending to my ISP's browser request replay system they've recently incorporated).
Paul-R wrote:
MikeT wrote:The first problem I have is that if I visit this site and have to leave before reading all new posts (or marking them as read), I find those posts are no longer shown as new or something has flagged them as read on my next visit. As a result, I (too often) miss new posts.
This doesn't sound unusual to me. Your visiting of the site resets the cookie and after a certain time (settable on some sites but probably not this one) - usually 15 - 20 mins - a forum action will generate a new cookie.
I don't know enough about cookies... are you saying it's possible this change of cookie resets the new posts (or shows them as read)? Can I do anything to avoid that and preserve the "new posts" status until I actually read them (or mark them as read)?
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Post by Paul-R »

MikeT wrote:I don't know enough about cookies... are you saying it's possible this change of cookie resets the new posts (or shows them as read)? Can I do anything to avoid that and preserve the "new posts" status until I actually read them (or mark them as read)?
That's usually the case, yes. As I said the length of time is forum dependant and can (usually) be altered by the admins.

The length of time that you're shown as being active also has an effect of the forum statistics. A longer length of time boosts the number of users displayed browsing making the site seem busier than it is.
As I get older I think a lot about the hereafter - I go into a room and then wonder what I'm here after.

Inside every old person is a young person wondering what the hell happened.

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spider
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Post by spider »

MikeT wrote: Are "new posts" still preserved for you when this happens? All of them? It's difficult to determine unless you go through each category checking post date/times or have a remarkable memory.
To be honest, I cannot remember. If anything it unmarks topics I have read.
Paul-R wrote:That's usually the case, yes. As I said the length of time is forum dependant and can (usually) be altered by the admins.

The length of time that you're shown as being active also has an effect of the forum statistics. A longer length of time boosts the number of users displayed browsing making the site seem busier than it is.
There's session and activity though, can be separate entities in some cases. By default its 5 minutes for the online list using this software, however the session length is a lot longer than that. Its done to reduce the loading from a query to calculate who should actually show as 'here'
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Post by citronut »

Mike isnt the stalk stalk cause by to much V.i.A.G.R.A :roll: ,

my ISP is VIRGIN and i dont get that problem :lol:


i also use Firefox as my browser which every time i close it it deletes all cookies,

i never go onto my internet banking without closeing and re/openning my browser,


regards malcolm
Last edited by citronut on 03 Mar 2011, 08:00, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by myglaren »

citronut wrote:M

i never go onto my internet banking without closeing and re/openning my browser,


regards malcolm
You might also use the Private Browsing option as a bit of extra security.
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