Does SDMB have this feature?

About This Message Board
1

I’ve read the FAQ and didn’t find an answer.

At another vBulletin board, I can set my controls so that some forums aren’t included in the “New Posts” option. In other words, if I’m only interested in Cafe Society or IMHO, I can set it so that the only new posts that show up are new posts from those forums.

Can we do that here?

2

No you can’t, but it’s not hard to set it up. If the staff are interested, I can provide a step-by-step guide on how to set this up.

3

There’s no nested quotes in it, is there? :smiley:

(I kid, I kid. And I appreciate the tip.)

Please send it on. I’ll look at it and we’ll see what happens.

4

I can only guess you made this quip about nested quotes because there’s been issues with that before? I mentioned in a thread a few weeks ago, and I’ll mention it again. I work with Firefox 3.xxx on a Linux box (mostly) and a Win 98 box (sometimes). On the Linux box, I have never yet gotten nested quotes to work, unless I laboriously cut-and-paste pieces together. Likewise, I have never gotten multi-quotes to work, unless I cut-and-paste pieces. On my Win box, these work.

5

I laughed. :smiley:

Here goes:

  1. In the AdminCP, go to User Profile Fields / Add New User Profile Field. Set the options as follows:

Title: New Posts Link
Description: Tailor the behavior of the New Posts button to include or exclude specific forums.
Default value: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php?do=getnew
Max length: 256
Field length: 60
Profile-field type: single line text box
Display order: 5
Field required: no
Field editable by user: yes
Private field: no
Field searchable on Members list: no
Show on Members list: no
Display page: Options: thread viewing

Hit Save.

  1. Go to Admin CP / Styles & Templates / Search in Templates.

In the top box, type in “getnew” (without the quotes) and click Find. The Style Manager should pop up with all the templates in red that have the New Posts link (in this case, it should just be the navbar template.) Double click on navbar. That will open the template, so you should now see a page with a bunch of HTML.

Find the line that looks like:



<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="search.php?$session[sessionurl]do=getnew" accesskey="2">$vbphrase[new_posts_nav]</a></td>

and replace it with:



<if condition="$bbuserinfo[field5]">
<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="$bbuserinfo[field5]" accesskey="2">$vbphrase[new_posts_nav]</a></td>
<else />
<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="search.php?$session[sessionurl]do=getnew" accesskey="2">$vbphrase[new_posts_nav]</a></td>
</if>

The original line will actually appear twice, only the first one actually gets used. To be complete, however, I’d recommend replacing both lines.

Check the box that says “Save in Template History?” and add a comment like “Giraffe is hunky”, then hit Save.

  1. For extra credit, you could also add a vanity search shortcut to the navbar which I bet would make everyone super happy. Just append the following code after the from above:


<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="search.php?$session[sessionurl]do=process&titleonly=0&searchuser=$bbuserinfo[username]&searchdate=30&exactname=1&showposts=1" accesskey="2">My Posts</a></td>

Then hit Save again.

That’s it. Should take like three minutes. After this, people can set their own custom searches that will automatically replace the default New Posts link, e.g.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php?do=getnew&exclude=35,5

to search all forums except The Pit and Marketplace. Or

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php?do=getnew&include=4,7,12

to only show new posts from GD, MPSIMS and IMHO. (You can get the forum ids by rolling over the links on the main page. If this gets implemented, someone can probably list them all in a handy reference thread.)

6

I give a +1 to adding this feature.

7

I think you should make the Calendar work first. I have no more room to make scratches on the cave wall.

8

A lot of people complained because they view the boards on mobile devices and nested quotes made for a shit-ton of scrolling. I think it also ate up more bandwidth and stuff (always at a premium round here) because each thread would end up being 5 times as big.

9

Please add this.

10

I think the only problem that annoyed the mods and thus killed nested quotes was the fact that many users didn’t edit the tags properly and the mods were having to repeatedly go in and fix the resulting misattributions.

As a mobile user, automatically nested tags made it easier for me to quote an exchange between posters because cutting and pasting is nigh impossible on a phone.