'Show unread posts since last visit' not working - any ideas?

[miminmonkey]

Hi there,

I wondered if anyone knew why the 'show unread posts ince last visit' option doesn't seem t be working for my members?

If, for example, I read the forums at night and go back in the morning and 20 posts have been made it tells me that there are none, and asks me if I'd like to display all unread posts...

This has only begun to happen recently, any ideas? 

[[Unknown]]

Are you using SSI.php or any integration?

-[Unknown]

[miminmonkey]

mmmm... I do not actually know what this means, so I am not sure 

I am sure that I have the forum as basic as it can get, I try not to fiddle with it to much since I actually wiped the whole forum off a ew days ago and had to get somebody to fix it for me 

[Squished_Squirrel]

My wife has a user on her BB that is having the same problem. When the user selects the "Show Unread Posts" option, nothing is there, even though there are new posts.

Where is this info stored for the user? Is it cookie based, or sql based? Would recount statistics help, or do I need to suggest that this user remove or enable cookies?

Thanks,
Squirrel

[[Unknown]]

It's session based.  Is it possible they are accessing via http://xyz.com, and your forum is http://www.xyz.com?

If you are using a subdomain, you might try adding this to Settings.php before the ?>:

@ini_set('session.cookie_domain', '.example.com');

Where example.com is your domain name.

-[Unknown]

[Thunderace]

I have to say that this rarely works for me on THIS site.

Sometimes it's populated, sometimes it's not.

Seems to me that if I come in a lot it's populated, if I go to work and return after, lets say, 5 hours then it's unpopulated.

Related to number of unread posts?

[[Unknown]]

Since last visit.  Since last visit.

-[Unknown]

[Thunderace]

What am I missing then?

If I go to work and return 5 hours later then my "last visit" was 5 hours ago. So why is it unpopulated?

[[Unknown]]

Well, you see, your "last visit" lasts a bit of time.  If you come back like an hour later, it's possible that SMF could have not deleted your session yet, and it could still count as the visit from an hour ago.

By unpopulated, how do you mean?  If you mean no posts at all, I've never experienced that here.

-[Unknown]

[Thunderace]

Yup no posts at all.

It's not occasional, it's every visit after work (read long time away) = empty.

All that evening, as I log in and out it's not empty.

Furthermore .. then if i click try all unread topics it takes about 20-30 secs.

[xenovanis]

This is the way it should work, not?

I log in, I view unread posts since last visit -> this is working
Then, after reading them, I view all unread posts to see the unread posts from before my last visit -> this is not working, no posts are showing.

[Thunderace]

No .. "Show unread posts since last visit" should .. errrm ..

Show all posts that were made since my last visit

[geminisnake]

I've consistently had the same problem with SMF ... almost every version and it's the most complained about thing in my PM and email from members of forums I use. On the 1.0 range it worked sometimes and on the 1.1 + range nothing works whatsoever, ever. no matter what time anyone visits the forum. I've actually lost a lot of regular members because of it but I can't work out how to fix it.

[Sarge]

This topic is more than two years old...

Anyway, what values are set in Admin > Server Settings > Feature Configuration tab > "Default login cookies length (in minutes)" and "Seconds before an unused session timeout"?