Child (grandchild) board topics not updating some stats

[khigh]

I've got a board with 12 child boards. Since the list of child boards was filling up people's screens, they didn't realize there was actually content on the parent board itself, so to neaten things up, I made ONE child board, and put all the original child boards under that.

Now I have two problems with the child boards. If a new post is added to one, and it's read via recent posts, or unread posts, it flags itself as read for those vies, but n the main forum view, the unread flag indicator is still next to the parent board. and at the bottom of the forum at the stats, if that child board post is the most recent post,it doesn't show down there. It shows the next most recent.

Have I blown a setting?

Thanks for looking.

[khigh]

Additional info...

This is the latest post in my forum stats



But if I click right below it on show recent posts, it shows that is not the latest.

[Illori]

maybe better to take a look at http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2294 ?

it sounds like you are falling into one of the "features" of SMF. it is a performance issue to show the grandchild boards topics etc in the parent board so they dont show up. it is not a good idea to try to get them to show up either.

[khigh]

Thanks for replying.

I see how the columns in the mod would help my original problem of the boards obscuring the content of the parent board.

But I don't understand any of the other of what you said?

Is the jist of it that you shouldn't have multiple levers of nesting child boards?

[khigh]

I keep reading that - I don't understand it still, but just in case - I want to clarify - I'm not trying to get the topics to show up in places other than what they are.

These are my goals.

1) I want the new topic flag on the parent board's forum index view to go away if all topics have been read. I don't know if I'm explaining this right, but it makes people go "Oh hey! New content!" and there is none.

2) I assume related - I want the forum stats showing the last topic to be "the last topic". Calling it otherwise is just weird and kind of unhelpful.

[Kindred]

1- not sure I understand... But if you read the board, then the new posts flag goes away...   If you have multiple child boards, then it might not clear until you have read all of the child boards...

2- the last post is that...  But it won't show if the board win the last post is a grandchild.... As Illori tried to explain.   The post count and latest posts only draws from the parent and child... Not grandchildren.

[khigh]

Oh OK - saying it specifically was a big help.

So you get two levels to work with. That was the problem I was not understanding. I've never run across that before.

Thanks

I guess I need the mod.

[khigh]

Welp - I still don't understand.

I installed the mod, and got this while they were still grandchildren with a four column setting.



But when I start moving them out from grandchildren to children, they're not doing anything different. If I did all 12 it would push the board content off the screen and no one would even know anything was there.



I had it marked as solved because this sounded like what would fix it, but I'm just not understanding.

[Kindred]

You are talking about three different things...

1- the display of child and grandchild boards.  The mod that you installed displayed the grandchild boards in the column layout and the child boards in the standard layout.

2- the new post icon...   The new post icon lights up if there are new posts in the main board or in any child board... It does not search grandchildren.

3- the last post listed...  Like #2...

[khigh]

OK - let me get this straight in terms I understand.

I have to choose between...

A) The list of child boards filling up the screen and pushing the forum content off the page

   or

B) New posts and unreads don't update.

and there's no fix for that?

[Illori]

correct those are your options, and no there is not a fix as it is not broken.

[khigh]

Well no I see what you're saying it's not broken from an "it's expected behavior" standpoint.

I meant from a usability point of view a fix would be nice.

The only thing I can think of to make it work without either problem would be to have two boards per state. So in the example above, there would be "Georgia State Forum" and "Georgia Regional Forums", which would be suboptimal from a "length of the main forum board listing" standpoint, but at least nothing would be broken.

Is this potentially something changing in 2.1? It seems like a HUGE limitation.

[Illori]

Is this potentially something changing in 2.1? It seems like a HUGE limitation.

i really doubt it will be fixed, it is a performance issue and i dont see the dev team putting the effort to try to find a way to work around that at this point.

[Kindred]

additionally we do not encourage huge lists of boards and child boards, because, when an admin does that, it invariably leads to little or no traffic...

it is not as much of a limitation as you seem to think, since most sites do not have the massive amounts of child boards that you seem to want.

however, i believe that there is another mod which changes the display of child boards, not just grandchild boards

[khigh]

I definitely understand about too many boards discouraging traffic. The current setup is about 20% of the old hot mess board count-wise. The old (phpbb) one had THREE for each region. Some regions have like four people in them! I kind of had to put my foot down with the group admins to really pare it down and get it to one per region.

That's why I don't want the region boards to detract from the content of the state board. BUT... the unreads need to work. Like I said, it's suboptimal, but the only thing I can see is having two boards per state on the main forum menu - a statewide board and a regional board to hold the subforums. I'm just surprised because otherwise it's such a powerful software otherwise.

[Steve]

however, i believe that there is another mod which changes the display of child boards, not just grandchild boards

The mod Illori linked to (http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2294) IS for child boards.

[khigh]

Yeah that's the one I displayed above that didn't help.

However - I came at this a bit backwards and I may not be screwed completely - a couple more options to try.

Usually, when I want advanced functionality, I scour the mods and go from there. This time I didn't KNOW I was wanting advanced functionality. It's such an egregious behavior, I assumed it was a problem. Now that I'm looking through the mods, a few things like "child boards as drop downs" and "child boards after topics" looks like they could help keep me from having to litter up the main board index. It will be tomorrow before I can look at any mods, but I have renewed hope!

[Kindred]

Steve... yes... that's why i said that I thought there was ANOTHER mod that helped with the layout of child boards...

[Steve]

Ah, okay. I thought you were thinking that mod was for grandchild boards.