Allow board stats to count those within child forums

[GigBuddy]

With SMF 2.0 RC3 if you have the following:

Forum Index
|
-- Read Only Board
      |
      --- Child Board 1
      --- Child Board 2

Then when you look at the top level forum index the post count stats in the child board are not credited against the read only board, which gives the misleading impression that there's no activity on the board.  It would be nice to have the option when you go to modify the permissions settings on the read-only board to "aggregate child post counts"  Of course I could have missed the option somewhere so any pointers please let me know.

[Ashley S]

You can make count the posts in child-boards in the ACP.

[青山 素子]

When you go below a certain point in nesting, SMF stops including those in the total as it would be very intensive work to do so. I believe that starts at the grandchild level.

[GigBuddy]

You can make count the posts in child-boards in the ACP.

Thanks, I'd missed the option 

[imno007]

This is an old thread, I know, but I'd like to second this. SMF needs to be able to count the posts and topics of ALL child boards, no matter how deeply nested. Let ME decide if it's too much of a performance hit by allowing me to control how many boards are counted via admin options, rather then giving me a one-size fits all solution. Some of us have sites on better servers than others. I've imported my SMF 2.0 RC4 forum to IPB 3.1 and the IPB version runs very smoothly, even giving me an accurate count of all posts and topics on the index page. Should I conclude from this that IPB is better coded than SMF, or simply that Simple Machines doesn't want to bother with this and so keeps giving us the "it's for your own good" explanation? 

By the way, I tried doing a simple edit of Subs-BoardIndex.php, increasing the default child board count of +1, but I found that it does absolutely no good past +3. If anyone knows of another way of doing it, I'd appreciate it. TIA!

[Illori]

the main reason why smf will not and does not count grandchild post count in the parent board, is because of the stress it would put on the server being used. this has been posted before with the same answer.

[imno007]

the main reason why smf will not and does not count grandchild post count in the parent board, is because of the stress it would put on the server being used. this has been posted before with the same answer.

No offense, but I've read several very similar posts already. I KNOW the official reason given, but it's starting to sound like people are toting the party line. Your answer still begs the question of why so many other forum platforms will total all posts and topics, regardless of board depth, and still perform perfectly fine. Hosts aren't shutting them all down because of the crazy stress they put on their servers from having to do x-many queries on the db because of having to count too many nested boards. I'm sure there's millions of forums out there in the world that have lots of nested boards that get properly counted and still perform perfectly fine, even with thousands of users. Please don't make me actually go to the trouble of finding and linking to several just to prove my point. But maybe it's an smf thing, something about their own code that would make it perform especially bad under similar conditions. I'm no code expert, so that's a possibility the more knowledgeable of you will have to rule on.

[Kindred]

do note the ?

This has been refused and rejected as a feature

[vbgamer45]

the main reason why smf will not and does not count grandchild post count in the parent board, is because of the stress it would put on the server being used. this has been posted before with the same answer.

No offense, but I've read several very similar posts already. I KNOW the official reason given, but it's starting to sound like people are toting the party line. Your answer still begs the question of why so many other forum platforms will total all posts and topics, regardless of board depth, and still perform perfectly fine. Hosts aren't shutting them all down because of the crazy stress they put on their servers from having to do x-many queries on the db because of having to count too many nested boards. I'm sure there's millions of forums out there in the world that have lots of nested boards that get properly counted and still perform perfectly fine, even with thousands of users. Please don't make me actually go to the trouble of finding and linking to several just to prove my point. But maybe it's an smf thing, something about their own code that would make it perform especially bad under similar conditions. I'm no code expert, so that's a possibility the more knowledgeable of you will have to rule on.

I think i have idea on how to do it with one extra query just get all the board totals in one query then sum for each level deep based on that information.

[imno007]

the main reason why smf will not and does not count grandchild post count in the parent board, is because of the stress it would put on the server being used. this has been posted before with the same answer.

No offense, but I've read several very similar posts already. I KNOW the official reason given, but it's starting to sound like people are toting the party line. Your answer still begs the question of why so many other forum platforms will total all posts and topics, regardless of board depth, and still perform perfectly fine. Hosts aren't shutting them all down because of the crazy stress they put on their servers from having to do x-many queries on the db because of having to count too many nested boards. I'm sure there's millions of forums out there in the world that have lots of nested boards that get properly counted and still perform perfectly fine, even with thousands of users. Please don't make me actually go to the trouble of finding and linking to several just to prove my point. But maybe it's an smf thing, something about their own code that would make it perform especially bad under similar conditions. I'm no code expert, so that's a possibility the more knowledgeable of you will have to rule on.

I think i have idea on how to do it with one extra query just get all the board totals in one query then sum for each level deep based on that information.

That would be great, vbgamer45, if you could implement and share that code. That would be very nice. Seriously, I had to put up a sticky on my site explaining to users that all post and topics counts on the front page are way off the actual numbers because of the way simple machines chooses to code their software. It'd be nice to have an alternative to that.

[Arantor]

Honestly, that's not the best way to do it in performance terms, since that query has to include board access which for non administrators is very slow indeed.

Far better would be to modify the underlying functions, both where it queries, and where it aggregates the tables later. But then it has a habit of breaking any other mod that wants to modify the board index in any way... whatever you do there are negative consequences.

[imno007]

Honestly, that's not the best way to do it in performance terms, since that query has to include board access which for non administrators is very slow indeed.

Far better would be to modify the underlying functions, both where it queries, and where it aggregates the tables later. But then it has a habit of breaking any other mod that wants to modify the board index in any way... whatever you do there are negative consequences.

So...maybe I'm reading too much into your comment, but can I take from this that basically the reason smf can't do this, in comparison with other forum platforms out there that can, is because of some limitation in it's coding that can't be easily circumvented, not without creating a lot of problems? So maybe in another 5 years when 3.0 comes out, after they've made some fundamental code changes? Accept it or switch platforms, those are the choices, I concede defeat.

[Arantor]

You are reading too much into my comment.

It's possible to do, certainly. It has performance constraints, but for forums with fewer boards it's not a total killer. But once applied as a mod, it will effectively have to modify a bunch of stuff that will likely break any future mods that want to modify the board index.

Or you do it in a much more performance intensive way.

[imno007]

You are reading too much into my comment.

It's possible to do, certainly. It has performance constraints, but for forums with fewer boards it's not a total killer. But once applied as a mod, it will effectively have to modify a bunch of stuff that will likely break any future mods that want to modify the board index.

Or you do it in a much more performance intensive way.

Where there's a will there's a way. Eventually I'll get it done, even if I have to hire a coder to do it for me. This kind of thing just kills me, when a forum software has so many "sophisticated" features but will then leave out something so basic, something that you'd personally consider an essential feature for a good forum to have. To me, being able to have accurate post and topic counts on your index page is one of those essential features, just something that makes good common sense for a forum. What's the point of having misleading totals? Others have their faults too, so I'm not just picking on SMF. Recently, for example, I could hardly believe it when I found out that IPB 3.1 has no inline option to move or merge topics returned on searches, or from its Reporting Center. After all these years, who would have thunk? Not me. Another one of those things I'd personally think would be a basic feature for any good platform.

[Norv]

To me, being able to have accurate post and topic counts on your index page is one of those essential features, just something that makes good common sense for a forum. What's the point of having misleading totals?

I can understand this... From a point of view, it doesn't sound right. If I may put it this way, "fooling" the user is worse than not giving him/her any information at all... Though perhaps that's a little too much said in this particular case.

On the other hand, I'm not sure how many forums really have very deeply nested boards, and if they're that needed after all. Sometimes, when I saw such deep structures, honestly it looked like admins could have structured them differently and it would have made it all more understandable and easier to navigate in.
On yet another hand, how significant is the difference on your forum?

[imno007]

Hi Norv, thanks for replying. You are correct in that "fooling" the user definitely does not apply in this case, as the totals reported on my forum are waaaay under, not over, the actual totals. The difference in reported versus actual totals is very significant. In just one of my main parent boards, for example, I presently have a topic count of 6,156 showing on my index page (this is after editing Subs-BoardIndex.php, mind you, otherwise the count would be lower). The actual topic count for that board (counting all child boards) is in excess of 15,000. I realize that the majority of forums probably won't have as many nested boards as I do, but the structure is appropriate to my site, which is book related and has hundreds of authors listed separately, in alphabetical order, by genre. And feedback from users is almost all positive: most of them are of course book lovers and they love being able to browse the forum much as they would their local bookstore.

I have to say that this whole discussion, to me, kind of begs the question of what's the point of touting unlimited nested forums as a feature if people aren't meant to actually take advantage of it?

EDIT: I guess maybe I should mention that this is a six-year old forum I'm running with SMF - closer to seven years - so it's not like I haven't been aware of this issue all this time. I never liked it, but I had never complained about it before. I spoiled it for myself, though, after importing everything over to IPB and seeing the site run so great, accurate post and topic counts and all, and that's what finally prompted me to say something about it.