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Site usage question...

The new site looks great, and it's wonderful to see LtU so fast, but I'm having a bit of trouble. I'm not sure how others generally use the site, but my m.o. has always been to read each comment that gets posted, in sequential order, and use my browser history (colored links) to tell me which ones I haven't seen. (For the record, I like mailing lists and dislike web forums, and this is the method that makes LtU act as much as possible like an email list.)

So, literally the only index page on LtU1 that I ever looked at was this one. I can't find a page like that on the new site! So I've been digging around trying to find the equivalent, but I'm concerned there's just no such thing. Does anyone have any recommendations? How do you guys use the site?

By Matt Hellige at 2004-06-21 14:53 | Site Discussion | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 6872 reads

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

That's how I always used LTU, too!

Great new site, folks! Really nicely done. Like Matt, I always used to read the sequential index page. It does seem as though the most recently changed item jumps to the top of the list on the "Recent Posts" page, but I don't see any way to keep track of the last post I read within a given topic.

By Bryn Keller at Mon, 2004-06-21 15:00 | login or register to post comments

Red stars

I've belatedly noticed that unread items appear with red stars after them. Perhaps only after I actually logged in?

By Bryn Keller at Mon, 2004-06-21 15:12 | login or register to post comments

Yes, once you're logged in...

...the Recent Posts pages shows red stars for unread items. That seems to work quite well.

By Anton van Straaten at Mon, 2004-06-21 15:24 | login or register to post comments

Also...

(Sorry to keep griping... please take it as an indicator of how much I really love reading LtU!)

It looks like front page posts don't show up in the forum? Is there any index of posts to the front page similar to this one? In other words, is there a sort of forum-view of the front-page topics, with info regarding number of comments, date of last post, etc.? One of the things I always liked about LtU1 was the lack of any real distinction between forum and front-page topics...

By Matt Hellige at Mon, 2004-06-21 15:06 | login or register to post comments

I did the same. The Recent P

I did the same.
The Recent Posts page is the closest thing I managed to find until now. We may decide to do something evne closer to what we had, but this may mean doing some programming.
Notice that unread message appear with a little red * on the Recent Posts page. It takes a little getting used to, but it's a helpful feature.

By Ehud Lamm at Mon, 2004-06-21 15:12 | login or register to post comments

The tracker ("Recent Posts") is the best we've got

But give us a few more day to see if we can provide these views, and to see whether the current setup grows on you.

By Ehud Lamm at Mon, 2004-06-21 15:14 | login or register to post comments

Better already

The recent posts page will definitely help a lot, as far as indexing goes. I'd still prefer a way to view each comment all by itself, but maybe that's less important. I'll try to get used to it the new way.

By Matt Hellige at Mon, 2004-06-21 15:17 | login or register to post comments

I think all the necessary data is in the Recent Post View

The big difference is that the data is grouped by topic.

If we just had a raw post view, with the topic being a column on each item, and ordered by time....

By Chris Rathman at Mon, 2004-06-21 15:24 | login or register to post comments

We originally wanted to do so

We originally wanted to do something like that before launching the site, but as Ehud said, it's probably going to require some programming.

In principle, it should be pretty straightforward, and I think everything suggested in this thread so far can be addressed.

By Anton van Straaten at Mon, 2004-06-21 15:30 | login or register to post comments

And while we're at it

Be nice if that view was also an RSS feed (which is related to another comment Ehud made). :-)

BTW, does Drupal have a good discussion forum for asking whether such a veiw can be constructed? Might help to tap into the collective.

By Chris Rathman at Mon, 2004-06-21 15:45 | login or register to post comments

drupal.org

Making the recent comments view an RSS feed is also a goal.

The drupal.org forums have plenty of info, and you can ask questions there. I've done some reading there, but haven't asked any questions yet.

My understanding of the RSS situation is that there are limits to the way an RSS feed can be constructed in Drupal right now, and a comment feed just didn't seem possible without programming. But I didn't find a definitive statement on that, it's just what I've gathered from reading docs etc.

By Anton van Straaten at Mon, 2004-06-21 16:00 | login or register to post comments

Just as sec

When you click a post's title on the Recent Posts page you get the comment/item all by itself (and note you can control the way comments are presented: each use can choose the the display he prefers)

By Ehud Lamm at Mon, 2004-06-21 15:20 | login or register to post comments

Yes. It just a different presentation of the same information

And we are quite used to our old ways...

By Ehud Lamm at Mon, 2004-06-21 15:27 | login or register to post comments

Forum Post RSS

In the same vein, I'm used to reading the forum comments within an RSS feed, which saves me a lot of time browsing (okay, less so with the much more responsive new site) and lets me read on my handheld computer at lunch or on the commute. So that would be a welcome feature; is it already available?

By Brian T Rice at Mon, 2004-06-21 16:34 | login or register to post comments

Not yet, but it will be.

As mentioned in the comments somewhere above, an RSS feed of comments doesn't seem to be available in Drupal by default (or if it is, we haven't figured it out yet). However, we're going to hack it in, relatively soon I hope.

By Anton van Straaten at Mon, 2004-06-21 16:54 | login or register to post comments

is this fixed yet? ever?

hi,

i think this is the same issue as above/below, but it's not clear to me whether there's a solution yet.

is there a single, date-ordered list of contributions to the site so that i can make sure i read all comments? i haven't found anything like this, or any other simple way of following things. if i check back soon enough the "active forum topics" and red asterisks give a fair idea, but with the old site i used to sometimes not read for a month (and often for a week or two) and then catch up with all comments. here, that seems to be very difficult, and after even a couple of days away the sidebar links are frustratingly inefficient.

i understand this implies work by someone - i just wanted to remind whoever that wonderful soul might be that it would be appreciated... (or, if it exists, please just point me on my way!)

cheers,
andrew

By andrew cooke at Sat, 2004-07-31 19:26 | login or register to post comments

We didn't forget

It's one of the high priority items, but for the time being the tracker is the closest thing to what you want.

By Ehud Lamm at Sat, 2004-07-31 19:29 | login or register to post comments

Recent Posts / Tracker

I'll second what Ehud said and just add that the tracker, a.k.a. Recent Posts, does give you what you need, albeit not in the most perfect form. As long as you're logged in, it should show red stars next to individual comments that you haven't read, so it gives a fairly quick way to get an overview of what's been happening.

Going forward, the plan is (a) to provide an RSS feed of most recent comments, and (b) to provide a web page of the same. (a) will be done first, since we already have some code by Gordon Weakliem to do that, which should be installed soon.

By Anton van Straaten at Sun, 2004-08-01 06:16 | login or register to post comments

thanks

thanks - that recent posts page is pretty good. please understand i'm not exactly complaining - i really do appreciate how much better this new site is and how much work has been done....

By andrew cooke at Sun, 2004-08-01 13:32 | login or register to post comments