Thread Page Length Keeps Changing

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1

I’ve read the FAQ and checked out the threads here and I couldn’t find where anyone else has posted about this, so I wonder if it’s something related to my browser or settings…

On my home computer (I’m running Win98 with IE5.50), every once in a while the number of replies per page in each thread goes back to 49 instead of 19. I like it that way and wish it would always do that, but alas, it’s inconsistent.

When it first happened I thought you guys had changed the default settings, but then it went back to 19 replies per page the next time I reloaded the forum. It continues to happen intermitently for me, and when it does, the forum URL sometimes has all kinds of extra characters - like this (I had to add some spaces throughout it because every time I preview, it changes the URL on me to the proper format! - how freaky is that?! (and I have un-checked “Automatically parse URLs”)):

http:// boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?s= 6bc4490aeddf87ef85e674542264afe5&daysprune= 2&forumid=12&x= 12&y=12

Interestingly, it also resets the number of days of threads showing from what I have set as the default in my profile, and it’s different for each forum.

However, I’ve got MPSIMS open in another window and it’s set to 49 replies per page in each thread, but the standard URL looks just fine…

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?forumid=4

And now, after previewing, I checked IMHO and I have that strange URL thing going on, but it’s back to 19 replies per page.

When I went to create this thread, it made me log in, even though I hadn’t logged out since my last usage. Is it possible that the default for browsing when one is not logged in is 49 replies per page in each thread and that logging in changes it to 19?

But then, what’s up with the bizarre URLs?

Is anyone else having this happen to them?

Is there any way to keep the 49 replies per page thing? It would sure make reading the boards a lot nicer, as you have to change pages and wait for them to load a lot less often (and I imagine it would be a lot less burdensome for the server, too).

What say you, admins?

2

Never noticed the 19 replies per page vs. 49, I’ll have to check. In any case, my first question for you is:
In user CP -> Edit options, do you have both of these options set to yes?
[ol]
[li]Automatically login when you return to the site? (uses cookies)[/li][li]Browse board with cookies?[/li][/ol]
I recommend that you have both of those set to yes, and that when you’re done using the SDMB, you go back to the home page and log out (in case someone else uses your computer.)

3

Yes and Yes. And no one else uses my computer, so I’m not concerned about logging out (unless it’s better for the server and you’d rather I did so).

Thanks for checking into the thread page length. Having to wait for only 1 page to load vs 3, or for 2 pages to load vs 5 when reading longer threads makes a big difference, given how slow the servers can be.

4

The limit is actually 50 posts per page, not 49 replies. On the first page, that’ll be 1 OP and 49 replies, but subsequent pages will have 50 replies. But that’s not really relevant.

I’ve never seen threads on this board go to page 2 after only 20 posts, but I think that might be the setting on the temp board. Is that possibly the cause of confusion here?

5

I can only find 40 posts per page as the max.

user cp => Edit options => Under Thread View Options there is Default Posts per Thread: and the max I see is 40.

I’ve it set to 40 and that’s the way all threads apear to me.

6

OK. First of all, those “bizarre URLs” are related somehow to a session number I think but without knowing the details of the PHP source code I can’t say for sure.

Regarding posts per thread:
The default we have set for # of threads on the forum display is 50.
The default we have set for # of posts to display per thread is 50.

In the user CP -> edit options screen, a Member can override the default # of posts per thread and change it to 5,10,20,30 or 40.

Shayna, did you change the default # of posts per thread?
The number of threads/posts displayed on a page may be switching after you get logged off. Other people have reported getting logged off after approximately 2 hours.

7

No, I kept it at the forum default, but… somehow it managed to reset to 20 posts per thread and 20 threads per page. And another but… I’ve always had 50 threads per page, even though the setting in my CP said 20. I know I never set either of those to 20, nor would I, so I wonder what happened.

And that must be the answer to why sometimes I get 20 and sometimes 50 – I get 50 when the board logs me out because that’s the forum default. So I switched it back to use the forum default again and hopefully it’ll stay that way now.

I guess the funny URLs don’t really matter – I just thought they might’ve been part of the problem.

Thanks for helping, Arnold!