I don't understand!

[kuanyin]

The new site is so fabulous in MANY ways, I hate to say anything negative. But, maybe it is just my own ignorance and you can set me straight. I see something that says mark main topic as read, or similar meaning. But, I can't get that to happen.

Right now, it seems that main topics get all jumbled up and old posts get put back on top when they have the most recent reply. And they don't change color or anything after reading them. This is making it very hard to quickly scan the board for new topics. Man, I hate to be picky, but this is so important for me in a site.  So many new posts get put up here, and I really want to be able to see them without scrolling through all the pages. Can I format it for this?

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I see something that says mark main topic as read, or similar meaning. But, I can't get that to happen.

"Mark Topics as Read" will only do exactly as it says. It won't mark posts as read. Everytime someone posts something new in a topic, that topic moves to the top of the list, and if you're a registered member, the word "new" will appear in the board index before the topic's title.

Right now, it seems that main topics get all jumbled up and old posts get put back on top when they have the most recent reply. And they don't change color or anything after reading them.

So far as changing color goes, that wouldn't help you because as soon as someone would post something new in a topic, the topic title would change back to its unread color by virtue of the fact that something new has been posted to it.

This is making it very hard to quickly scan the board for new topics. Man, I hate to be picky, but this is so important for me in a site.  So many new posts get put up here, and I really want to be able to see them without scrolling through all the pages. Can I format it for this?

In a word, no - at least not yet. If you read the boards daily, your only option is to scroll through a topic until you hit the first post that says that it was posted "today". Or if you read the boards every other day or so, then you have to scroll to the first post made after the last time you've read the board. But if you read my latest response to Ringo in "Some Questions about the Board", you'll see that a modification is in the works that will allow members to immediately go to the newest post in a topic since the last time they've visited the forum. However, there's absolutely no ETA on when that feature will be installed because I only started to work on it yesterday, and other forum business consumes most of my free time. But I definitely understand where you're coming from kuanyin, and the only other thing I can say is that I'll try to perfect and install that feature as soon as is humanly possible. I can't offer you anything more than that...

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Actually, kunyin, it dawned on me this morning that there is a trick that you can use that will work very similarly to "All By Date" on the VantageNet board:
If you open the "Search" feature (by clicking on its link at the top or bottom of most of the forum's pages) and you type a period in the "Search for:" field, select "Any poster" from the drop down menu, scroll down to the bottom of the page and enter an approximate amount of hours and/or days in the "Max Age since last post:" field since the last time you've read posts, all the posts made since that time will come up for you in the chronologicl order that they were made. Each post that comes up will display the Category/Board/Topic each was made, as well as what day/time it was made and who started the topic/who made the individual post. And probably best of all you can reply to any post from this listing.
You may also want to increase the "Display how many results?" from 25 to a larger number, depending on how long it's been since you last visited the forum.
The one drawback to this method of reading the boards is that everything that normally appears to the left of the text of everyone's posts (avatars, links to their profile/homepage/e-mail/etc.) do not appear in the listing. But it still might be an alternative that you might want to explore...

I should probably also mention that once I've installed the modification that will take members to the next newest post in a topic they've previously read, that feature will slow the forum down (though I don't know by how much) because every member will have a file on the system containing the topics and dates/times of latest post within that topic at the time they last closed it - and the system will have to check that file every time a member opens a topic they've previously read so it can figure out which post was the latest one for each individual member and jump to the post directly after it. I haven't quite decided on the time frame this information will be kept in each member's file, but I'm leaning toward a period of not longer than two weeks: 1) because it's extremely rare for a topic to continue to collect new posts for longer than that, and 2) the size of the file would become way too unwieldy if it stores information for any longer period - it would REALLY slow the overall system down. On those very rare occasions when someone might add a new post to a topic that's over two weeks old, members would have to go back to scrolling to the new post on their own...
The trade off with a feature like this is always speed over convenience.

[kuanyin]

I'll just try to wait patiently. And may I nicely say how creepy your pic is?

[RingoCollins]

RE: title of thread.

Catchy phrase, that!