Can we see if someone posts when using the whos online forum?

[no1_vern]

In the "whos online" we see who is online and what they are viewing. Can a box be added to tell if they respond/post to the thread they are reading or a link made to the new response or post if one is there?

[RobRich]

It seems "New Posts" provides much of the functionality you are seeking.

http://www.techimo.com/forum/search.php?do=getnew

I am not a PHP developer, but I suspect hacking into "Who's Online" to report additional activity would probably add additional database queries. While perhaps possible, it would likely increase database server loading, which we generally prefer to avoid.

[EXreaction]

Something like that wouldn't work the greatest.

It is quite possible to do, and, as long as the sessions system is similar to phpBB, it wouldn't add any additional db queries.

But the problem comes in with time. Maybe they post in the thread, then move right onto another. Once they move to the next page their session data is updated right away which would clear the information from their last page. So your box telling you that information wouldn't be very helpful.

The best addition like that would be something like the new posts functionality, except where it records each thread that was last posted in by each user, then it could write that in the who is online page if the post is less than a few minutes old.

The second one shouldn't take any extra database queries either (or at the most, 1 extra query after every post by the user), however it would require the alteration of the sessions database table and you'd want to add at least 2 fields, one for the last post id and one for the last post time by the user.

Of course, I haven't worked with vB much, so I don't know how the database is setup, just basing what I would need to do off of phpBB3.

[RobRich]

Actually Ex, a live feed system linked to vBulletin transactions is already done for an administrative feature. It was coded in house. However, we use it for internal purposes, as it could quite easily overrun a server grid on a large site like TechIMO if deployed publicly.

[EXreaction]

Ya, that is something you guys would probably need, especially if you would have stuck with your old moderation ways.

But I guess things are different since your paid to be here.

But the second way I mentioned of doing things wouldn't put any more of a load on your servers, if sessions are setup in somewhat the same way as phpBB3 (recorded in 1 sessions database table).

Any way I could get some basic information on your server setups? Like how much space you guys actually use for TIMO, and how many servers you use on a grid. I am guessing not, but I am curious, I love working with mass amounts of data (my curiosity probably comes from when I started looking at database mass in the first place with my experimental rainbow tables for MD5. That was an interesting experiment. I don't remember exactly how much, but once you get past 6 digits with 104 possiblities per digit you get into hundreds of GB's of space in a MySQL database. I'd like to see how much overhead is actually used in something like that though, I'd imagine a lot of the file size could be trimed if it was stored in a specialized database). Don't get the wrong idea of course, I do like to look into security to forward the advancement of my own. I was seriously wondering how hard it would be to crack an MD5 sum by brute force. Without rainbow tables it is pretty much impossible beyond 5 characters, but with rainbow tables it is pretty much impossible with the sheer amount of size they take up.

A 7 digit password, for example, stored as an MD5 hash would be extremely safe against brute force methods, as long as your an average person. If you have sensitive data, or links to a big businesses network, a 10 char password would be almost uncrackable in a lifetime with 1 average pc.

// that was a long rant...how do I get so off topic?

[no1_vern]

Ok Rob.

The idea came to me while I was checking out who and where everyone was and Ding! I thought Hey, if there was a link to the post they just made on the "whos online" page it would be one click.

Instead of click to see newest posts, search for the thread I'm interested in, try to remember which number post was the last post the last time I checked the thread, and realize I cant remember where I was were in the thread, so I have to click on the thread to see if anyone has posted, etc. . . Im sure most people dont forget as many things as I do-Feeling really old right now .

[RobRich]

I do not deal with hosting.

Still, if you want to evaluate the size and scope of our operations, Yahoo! currently indexes over 2.8 million pages for ResellerRatings alone. A large portion of those pages are either being served via our own in-house developed content management systems or middleware applications. For an example of our middleware, look towards the price search engine at ResellerRatings. While we use XML feeds from a partner search engine, but we provide our own middleware layer for end-user content delivery.

Getting into the heavy lifting of our core development staff, you would be looking at our PhotoPost division, which includes professionals highly skilled in PHP, SQL, and more.