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Author Topic: Understanding "last visit"  (Read 5188 times)

Jeremy Roussak

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Understanding "last visit"
« on: July 15, 2012, 08:28:05 am »

I suspect this is mainly a post for Mark, but anyone is welcome to aid my confusion.

I am an avid reader of the forums here, and I like to read them all: even the subjects in some (such as the medium format forum) which will almost certainly never affect me directly can be of interest. I find the option to "show posts since your last visit" to be invaluable. However, I find that I am quite often missing posts, and indeed whole topics, because they don't appear in the list after I click this option.

Is this due to bugs in the forum software? Or have I perhaps not understood what's meant by a "visit"? Is my last "visit" when I arrived, or when I left? How is when I leave defined? Must I log out (which I don't do), or merely close the browser window?

I'm using Safari on Lion, and reading at various times from my laptop, my desktop and my iPad.

Jeremy
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Understanding "last visit"
« Reply #1 on: July 15, 2012, 09:27:54 am »

Jeremy,

I'll do my best to add to your confusion and hope that Mark will correct my errors.

I strongly suspect that each "visit" is timed from  when you first click on "show posts since your last visit". I, too, stay logged in, but once or twice I have accidentally clicked on that button twice  and the second click responds with something like "There are no new posts."

I generally open new tabs for all the threads that I want to look at and then look at them one at a time. When there are multiple pages of "new" posts, by the socond or third page the number of pages has usually gone down, suggesting that the "new posts" list is being actively updated as long as it is open. Sometimes there are new posts showing on page 1 that I am sure weren't there when there was still a page 2.

It is somewhat of a slippery slope, but if you were to check in religiously every five minutes, 24-7, you could probably be sure of getting all new posts!   :D

Eric
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Christopher Sanderson

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Re: Understanding "last visit"
« Reply #2 on: July 15, 2012, 11:43:15 am »

When you login, the Forum software records the time of your visit. Thus "since your last visit" ...

The situation will be different if you do not login or you visit as a different member

aduke

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Re: Understanding "last visit"
« Reply #3 on: July 15, 2012, 01:38:11 pm »

I, too, use the "Show unread posts since last visit" button. After looking at all of the interesting subjects in the list, often several pages worth, I then use the "Show all unread posts" button that appears at the bottom of the page. This, almost invariably, shows some posts that weren't shown before, posts that were timestamped before the last time I used  the "Show unread..." button.

It doesn't make a lot of sense and I hope I'm seeing everything of interest.

Alan
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Jeremy Roussak

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Re: Understanding "last visit"
« Reply #4 on: July 15, 2012, 01:55:31 pm »

When you login, the Forum software records the time of your visit. Thus "since your last visit" ...

But Chris, I'm permanently logged in.

Eric, you describe the behaviour I see. I'd not noticed until recently that I was occasionally missing posts, but it does seem to be happening.

Jeremy
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Christopher Sanderson

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Re: Understanding "last visit"
« Reply #5 on: July 15, 2012, 03:01:49 pm »

But Chris, I'm permanently logged in.

Yes, I would expect that the "Show unread posts since last visit." checks the login time and/or the last time that php script was run by you. Differences in time are often accounted for by the user time zone preference.

mguertin

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Re: Understanding "last visit"
« Reply #6 on: July 17, 2012, 03:39:00 pm »

There are a few factors that come into play with this.  Your "last visit" equates to the last time you refreshed or loaded a page logged in with your user account -- BUT -- it doesn't take affect until your current browsing session is considered complete (which I think defaults to 21 minutes of not loading a page).  It's not a foolproof way of tracking things, and from what I've seen can vary from device to device and most especially time zones (and if you have your time zone set correctly in your preferences).  It also means that if you didn't see or read a bunch of posts on your last visit, but had loaded a page after those posts had been made that they might not show up in your listing since those posts were made before your "last visit".  It's not a foolproof way to track things by any means but it is what the forum software offers so we're kind of stuck with it :/


« Last Edit: July 17, 2012, 03:41:14 pm by Mark Guertin »
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Jeremy Roussak

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Re: Understanding "last visit"
« Reply #7 on: July 17, 2012, 06:31:31 pm »

Your "last visit" equates to the last time you refreshed or loaded a page logged in with your user account -- BUT -- it doesn't take affect until your current browsing session is considered complete (which I think defaults to 21 minutes of not loading a page).

Thanks, Mark. I can understand that. 21 minutes is an interesting timeout!

Jeremy
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mguertin

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Re: Understanding "last visit"
« Reply #8 on: July 18, 2012, 01:29:57 pm »

21 minutes is the default time for PHP's built-in "garbage collection" routines to run ... in this case it would mean that it would clean up any session files that haven't been accessed for that timeframe.  I just looked at our setup and I think in our case the timeout is set to an hour (we manually bumped it up for other reasons).
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Jeremy Roussak

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Re: Understanding "last visit"
« Reply #9 on: July 18, 2012, 02:34:54 pm »

21 minutes is the default time for PHP's built-in "garbage collection" routines to run ... in this case it would mean that it would clean up any session files that haven't been accessed for that timeframe.  I just looked at our setup and I think in our case the timeout is set to an hour (we manually bumped it up for other reasons).

I think I understand now.

If I do what I usually do, which is to click "show unread posts since last visit", then simply read the interesting ones and close the browser window, then the next time I visit I may not see any items which were posted within one hour of the time I read the last of the messages. Is that right?

Jeremy
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mguertin

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Re: Understanding "last visit"
« Reply #10 on: July 18, 2012, 03:17:30 pm »

Yep that's exactly it.
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mguertin

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Re: Understanding "last visit"
« Reply #11 on: July 18, 2012, 03:20:03 pm »

Actually no ... sorry, that's not it.  You won't see any of those posts in the unread since your last visit because you have had another "visit" -- and that will apply to when you closed your browser (but doesn't take affect until an hour afterwards unless you load a page again).
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Understanding "last visit"
« Reply #12 on: July 18, 2012, 05:26:30 pm »

So if we're not careful, there's a chance that we might miss out on the one post on the LuLa forum that isn't worth reading!
Could you maybe flag that post for us, Mark?   :D

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