“New Posts” in Bulletin Board Systems 1

[powahusr]

I was wondering if anyone every came across such a feature:

I recently created a bulletin board system and would like to add a “New Post” feature to it. I already have added a counter for the number of posts per each topic, but what I would really like to do is place an icon next to the “Post #” signaling that there was a new post since the visitor last visited the page. If the “Count #” had not changed, no Icon would be present.

I explored use of cookies, but you can only use a maximum of 20 cookies per domain, so if the number of forum topics exceed 20, not including whatever cookies are issued throughout the site, the “New Topic” system would not work properly.

Anyway, if you have some kind of insight into this solution, perhaps an ideal one that you can graciously share with me, it would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!!!

 

[pigsie]

When you say new post i'm assuming you mea n new to that user i.e. not viewed by that particular user. What you can do is simply store a last logged in date/time for each user. When displaying the messages if any of them have a posted date which is after the last logged in date then you can display your new message icon. THis assumes that the user has to log in. If the user does not have to log in I would use client variables as the last visit date and time is stored in the client vars database and should be available. This will only require 2 cookies on the user's machine to identify him with his client vars stored in the database. If the cookie is not found you could ask the user to log in

 

[powahusr]

Thanks, thats the info that I was looking for.