updated forums and new threads

I have a similiar problem with my uie install. Instead of all new post icons I can't get any whether a post is new or not. Here is two other symptoms I am having...

1: In the user bar the last visit is always set to 31 Dec 1969 - 19:00 until you post a reply or thread. Once you post something for the first time its gets updated normally. This happens to the admin account or regular accounts.

2: If you search forum posts the results always show the date of posting as 12/31/1969 - 19:00.

Otherwise Posts and threads do show the proper date they were posted in the forum.

I tried a few fixes... I uninstalled and reinstalled the forum.. I tried changing drupals time zone per this post http://drupal.org/node/133367 ....still no luck. I did install an older dev version of this forum a few months ago....maybe I should be looking in the cache somewhere for old data?

My drupal install is running on php 5.2 and mysql 4.1. I am using drupal 5.1 with the 5.2 security patches.
I would be happy to offer up a test account on a live server for ya if that will help.

I cleared out all my cache tables did another re-install but I am still having the same issue. Here is another symptom...it seems after a few hours of posting a messge the last visit date gets set to 12/31/1969 - 19:00 again.

I'll try a fresh re-install of drupal next. Maybe its my server environment..I am hosted on media - temples grid server.

I tried a brand vanilla install of 5.3 and just this module...same problem. I am having just about the exact same issues from this post. http://drupal.org/node/133367

Sitcky icons and new reply icons dont show at all. The hot topic icon works but the hot-new icon does not.

I have been experimenting with UIEForum for a few days now and have found the following issue which may or may not explain some of the symptoms you have.

If you have Drupal caching enabled in the admin/settings/performance page then you will get apparently inconsistant views of forum pages when browsing as an anonymous user.

When an anonymous user accesses any page (thats nodes, forums, whatever) Drupal automatically will store a version in the cache (Probably are some exceptions but I think this is the general idea). Any other anonymous users trying to access the same page will be served the cached version.

So, you view a forum as an anonymous user and see that the last post to a thread was say 12:00PM. You then login and post to that thread. If you then (while still logged in) view the forum you will see the last post time as now 12:10PM. If you logout and then view the forum again as anonymous you will then see the last post time as still 12:00PM. Took me quite a while to figure this out.

I have not seen any unexpected behaviour when I am logged in. Posts seem to be doing what I expect as far as I can see.

If I turn of caching then things seem as I would expect for anonymous users as well.

I dont think it would be unusual for a site to allow anonymous users to browse forums but to have to log in to post. Its possible that in testing/experimenting people are seeing this issue going on.

Turning off caching fixes it but turns off caching for all of the site. If you have a lot of anonymous use of the site then this could adversly affect performance so be aware.

Another option which I have experimented with is programtically clearing sections of the cache (forum pages) when new content is posted. This works and allows me to retain caching enabled yet still have anon users see updates. There are issues and concerns I have over the best approach for this though and I havent finished playing yet.

Finally just to add, I think the UIEForums far better than the standard Drupal forums, more functionality, far closer to user expectations of a forum, easier to understand and hack about if required and easier to style. I don't know why the forums group doesnt just offer support to UIEForums to help it improve and mature (but I'm new here and dont want to step out of place ;-))

Well done and thanks to Zoro.

Andy

If anyone wants examples of what I did with the caching code changes to UIEForum then email me on
uk dot co dot zen at teardrop (reverse it)

Hey thanks for taking a crack at this arcaic...Two quick questions for ya..

Are you seeing the new post icons or sticky post icons in your uieforum when you are logged in as a user on your site? everything else works fine on my site except those two things. Also when you search your forum threads, do the results come back with a date of 1969 or 1970? I have also tried this on a vanilla drupal install and I am still getting those issues.. site cache is off and no modules are turned on.

This post describes exactly what is happening on my install... http://drupal.org/node/133367. I have also made sure I am using the latest uieforum version.. I have started to browse the cvs to try and catch the changes to the date section but it looks like a rather major change to the module..I dont think I could just drop in a few lines of older code to fix it for my install..

Hi guys,

I found I was not getting the new post icon displaying....

After a bit of digging I found that in uieforum.module the following two lines seemed wrong.

$lastything = uieforum_parse_date($Thread->LastPost);
$has_new_replies = ($lastything > $history) ? ($lastything > UIE_NODE_NEW_LIMIT) : false;

uieforum_parse_date returns the date as a ormated date string but $history is a internal date (ie a numeric) so when the comparison is made it doesnt work right. It might explain the behaviour others have been seeing and it certainally explains it on my installation.

Commenting out the original two lines and adding the third as below cures the newpost icon thing for me.

// $lastything = uieforum_parse_date($Thread->LastPost);
// $has_new_replies = ($lastything > $history) ? ($lastything > UIE_NODE_NEW_LIMIT) : false;
$has_new_replies = ($Thread->LastPost > $history) ? ($Thread->LastPost > UIE_NODE_NEW_LIMIT) : false;

Be aware that I have not tested this thouroughly for all cases. I'm pretty sure its not going to break anything but it may not be perfect or complete when it comes to determining when to display the newpost icon. ie timezone issues may still be present. The worst I think will happen is the wrong icon will be displayed which is what you have now!

Finally: as far as I can see the sticky icon is not used in UIEForums v 1.1.2.2 2007/03/19 so you will never see it.

Cheers

Andy

I am so glad I was wrong about it being a few lines of code....Tried out your fix...works great on my site so far. Thank you so much arcaic!

BTW This also works regardless of what the userbar says your last log in time was.. If I dont post for a while or if I log in as a brand new user my uie userbar will display the last log in time as 01 Jan 1970 - 00:00. For a user that has posted..they will still see new threads denoted with the new icon.

Hi people

I am new to Drupal forum's, and am using 6.0 Beta 3

I would like to find a way to shorten the "last post" entry in the forum display.

It presently includes this data "14 hours 49 min ago by phtumbler"

The length forces a line break in the display, making the forum ugly to read - each new contribution needs two lines for the display.

I would by happy with only the hours and user name

Alternative would be to modify the layout, so there is less space for the forum title

Can anyone help

Alex

arcaic - thanks for looking into that - I've applied your code fix to the main dev branch!

bischoff, the text you want to edit is found in uieforum.module, in the uieforum_block() function

Zoro

I think I have posted in the wrong place - am using Drupal Forum - version 6 beta 4

But - It seems that this is a superior forum and I will test it

Is UIE forum ready to work with Drupal 6.0 ?

Thanks
Alex

Unfortunately, its no where NEAR being ready for Drupal 6 - I haven't even started looking at the conversion! :(

Zoro

Thank you letting me know, saves me from getting into a real mess.

Please keep me on your list of version 6 users for when you might require testing etc.

Alex

I was having the same issue, where threads with new posts were not displaying the "new post" icon.

In uieforum.module, around line 43 I commented this line out:

// define('UIE_NODE_NEW_LIMIT', time() - 86400);

The new post icons are is working fine for me now, although it did make all of the posts appear new to all the members on the forum.