Usually when I check into the forum I go to the “show unread posts” link to see what has been going on since the last time I logged in…
This seems to be an ongoing problem now for over a month…when I click on the link, no unread posts show up.
I’ve signed out, dumped all my cookies, clean all my history but still the same. Using IE7
Anyone have any ideas what I may have done to cause this to happen?
Thanks
Steve
i,m using IE7 and for it to work for me i made weather-watch a ‘trusted’ site. 
cookies were being blocked b4 i did this.
and happy to report no problem since 
Looks like that may have taken care of the problem. Strange thing is I have not done this for other mesage boards I check into - question may be why only Weather Watch acting like this.
Oh well - it seems to work, I’m happy and I appreciate your help.
Thanks
Steve
I need to check on the way that the cookies are configured. I thought most of the info was stored on the server, so I’m surprised that it stores the unread message list on local PCs.
I don’t see how that can be happening, because I use several different PC’s and “unread” works on them all. I don’t see posts as unread on PC #2 that I have read on PC #1.
That fits with my thoughts that forum cookies are stored on the server.
I think if you blow away the cookies and re-access the forum from that PC then you’ll find you’re logged out IIRC so I think there is something on the pc, but logged in/out doesn’t affect unread.
I agree Niko
If I read on a Mac, they show as read on my windows pc and vice versa
Confirmed logging in sends a cookie, accessing the forum without that cookie prompts you to have to login.
Well it worked once but 2 hours later same problem, it doesn’t show any unread posts since my last visit.
I had logged out and then logged back in the second time.
Open to any ideas…
Thanks
Really strange, after I posted the last reply I went back and for the heck of it hit “show unread posts” and it worked!
just more info if it helps to a solution.
Sorry…didn’t have thinking head on before. There are login cookies which are stored on your PC and show if you have an authenticated forum login on that PC. There are also session variables stored in the database which show the status of your session, i.e. unread marks, etc.
I just started trying to write down why I think this problem occurs based on the above info (which is correct), but the more I wrote the less certain I was that the mechanism I was describing was correct, so I’ve deleted it and will perhaps have another think about this later on #-o
Do you log in with an unlimited login period selected? The default period of a session is 90 minutes so you will be auto-logged out after 90 minutes and perhaps your session information is dumped at the same time. That’s probably considered fail-safe because at an auto-logout you can’t be sure that the user had left things in a state they wanted to return to.
Yes I long in with the “Forever” selection. Today I logged in, automatically so I guess it’s working, clicked on “unread posts” and I got one item…find that hard to believe since it’s been a while since I’ve checked in…
Enjoy the weekend!
i do know that setting the date/timer forward on your pc plays havoc with the unread messages
Date and time is excatly as it should be…getting to a point where maybe loging in under another ID and password may be worth a try. If it works I can ask the administrator to delete my old ID.
Thanks
Turns out I swirched to Firefox and the problem goes away. So now I know that IE7 is the problem. Problem is now to find the switch in IE& thats cusing the unread post feature not to work.
Always open to any ideas.
Thanks
Now that’s interesting. Maybe a clue somehow. I’ve had the problem using Firefox since about the time some server changes (I think) were going on here.
Something else of note. I can see “Unread posts since last visit” until I shutdown the browser and restart. After the restart I have to go to “All unread Topics” before anything shows up. So if I remember to “Mark all posts as read” before I leave, I can than see the new posts say I visit tomorrow but I still have to go to the “All unread Topics” link before anything shows up. I tried making changes to a lot of the Firefox settings but none seemed to make any difference.
:oops: Hope you can follow what I said there. Surprisingly hard to describe such a simple symptom. #-o
That’s my opinion too. I generally use only IE7… sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Kevin
I have only started to see this issue using FF in the last couple of days, prior to this FF worked just fine. Then I remembered something, I noticed the other day when needing to copy the url for the forum that the one I got form the WD home page was different form the one I was using in my bookmarks. It only differed in that there was some additional info after the ‘/sms/’ pointing to a session id. So I started using this in my bookmarks thinking that it might be better, although my old link worked OK. Since I changed my bookmark the first time each day I start FF the show unread posts does not work, so I’m wondering if this is to do with the session id and perahps an expired cookie?
Anyway I’m going to change my bookmark back to what it was before and see if the problem goes away.
Stuart
Edit so far today since I changed back to using my old link to the forum Show Unread Posts has worked every time. The real test will be tomorrow when I boot up in the morning and see what happens. In case you want to try this the link I use is http://www.weather-watch.com/smf/