enigmatrogEvery forum I've ever visited has had new post notifications and a jump to unread post button. I won't pretend to know how most forums implement it, but how is it that they can do so without using so many resources it requires a subscription system to support it?your typical phpbb forum probably marks threads either "read" or "unread" in one of the following ways:
I'm by no means against having some way for you to recover some of the money you spend on hosting, but I'm a little confused as to why these basic forum features can't be available to everyone when most forums can provide them easily.
1. storing thread viewing history in your browser session
2. comparing a timestamp of your last visit to the activity in each thread
3. a combination of the two above
in all of these cases the downside is either imprecision or the fact that you lose all of your viewing history the instant you close your browser
the implementation on this site is database driven so that your viewing history saves on any browser and any device. it's a somewhat difficult idea to explain in full so i'll add a trial of sorts in the future to make it all clear.
The timestamp system seems to work well enough despite its imprecision, as I've never really had issues with it on any other site I've used. Considering nearly every other forum uses it (even those handling way more users than tftv, which is where I would assume imprecisions would show up more often), I'm not really sure why tftv would need a perfect implementation if it hogged resources to this extent.
If you offered the timestamp system to normal users, would people even notice a difference when they upgraded, or are the improvements very noticeable? I'd personally be more than happy to accept a few hiccups if it meant I didn't have to pay for basic forum functions, but at the same time I'd be okay with paying to upgrade from a timestamp system if your implementation makes significantly noticeable improvements.
edit: I'm assuming most forums use timestamps because I don't lose anything when I close my browser