The forum is updated with an RSS feed producer, which produces a feed for a forum and returns the last 50 messages posted. The output is cached on the server, until a new thread in a forum is posted or a new message in a thread.

Because RSS polling can get out of hand when crappy readers are used (i.e. readers which always fetch the feed), it is recommended you set the refresh interval to 30 minutes or bigger.

This is GREAT

Would it be possible to include a single RSS feed for the entire forum which holds a slightly larger number of messages (say 75) which would save me getting each forum individually (8*50=400)?

Marcus

Marcus wrote:

This is GREAT

Would it be possible to include a single RSS feed for the entire forum which holds a slightly larger number of messages (say 75) which would save me getting each forum individually (8*50=400)?

Marcus

Ok, you mean for all sections? Will look into this. The downside of rss feeds for forums and messages is that security is gone pretty much (i.e.: access rights). Not that there are hidden forums, but you'll never know

The RSS feed producer was a sunday afternoon project, which turned out to be very nice. So I think I can add more rss feeds soon. (not on threads I think, that would be pretty cumbersome to manage in a reader). For example the customer area should have an RSS feed as well, so you know instantly when something was added.

Sounds good.

The only other thing I noticed is that the Subject of the feed is in the form:

<username> in thread <subject>

This doesn't format very well in my news reader (I'm using Newsgator in Outlook 2003) as I cannot easily identify a single thread conversation because of the usernames appearing first. The first column in my news list in Outlook is username followed by subject (similar to how email is viewed).

I would really prefer:

<subject> (<username>) if indeed username is needed at all?

Pretty neat addition to the forum BTW.

Well done!

Marcus

Marcus wrote:

Sounds good.

The only other thing I noticed is that the Subject of the feed is in the form: <username> in thread <subject> This doesn't format very well in my news reader (I'm using Newsgator in Outlook 2003) as I cannot easily identify a single thread conversation because of the usernames appearing first. The first column in my news list in Outlook is username followed by subject (similar to how email is viewed).

Ok. I can change that easily

I would really prefer: <subject> (<username>) if indeed username is needed at all?

Well, I think it is needed. I don't need to read my own postings for example . And because there are no titles in the postings, I needed something to produce the title with And just the subject was a bit silly. 'Re:' would have been an option, but the datamodel is very normalized so a message is just a message, there is no 'I'm the thread start message' info....

Pretty neat addition to the forum BTW. Well done! Marcus

Thanks! I first thought to add an email notification system, but that was pretty intensive. Jeff came with the idea of RSS feeds and it turned out to be very simple: - typed list which bundles: message, thread, forum and user - 1 aspx page with a repeater and which produces the XML - 1 set of flags for each forum, located in a hashtable in the application object, so I can invalidate the cache when a new message is added to the forum - 1 code behind page which calls a BL method which creates a filter and a sorter and pulls the messages with the typed list from the db - the code behind page also contains a validate event handler which returns the appropriate validation value for the cache for a particular forum, based on the flag in the hashtable. . Now it is implemented I like it a lot too. I can see immediately when something is posted at the forums, which decreases response time to critical bugs for example.

Ok, messages are now listed as Subject by Nickname.

I like the RSS feeds, but I'm getting an error with RssReader on one of the forums. When I try to validate it at feedvalidator.org it shows the same error: http://www.feedvalidator.org/check?url=www.llblgen.com...px?ForumID=9&SectionID=2

Edit: Doh... Just ignore this... I thought I had clicked on the RSS image and grabbed the forum link instead. =)

Trig wrote:

Edit: Doh... Just ignore this... I thought I had clicked on the RSS image and grabbed the forum link instead. =)

Doh!

Otis, quick suggestion about the position of the rss buttons. I think they would look better either down the right hand side (after the last post column) or down the left hand side of the forum name (between forum and new post indicator).

just my tuppence worth

Ok, I'll reshuffle the buttons a bit

Frans, you're a prince among men for putting in RSS OK, one feature request: Can you make responses to the initial thread message as comments? I believe if the responses are listed as comments, they will get nested underneath the original post in the Blog reader instead of getting listed chronologically. A) It will keep the reader nice and clean, and B) It will allows us to follow threads much easier. Thanks!

Jeff...

Good suggestion, Jeff!

prince - bow

I'm not sure how to implement it however . The comments are in a different format as it seems. Threads on this forum are also not 'start post + comments' but just 'thread + postings'. However that can be worked around.

I'll see what I can come up with. Do not expect an update right away though, as I definitely want that update out the door this week.

Otis wrote:

Good suggestion, Jeff!

prince - bow

I'm not sure how to implement it however . The comments are in a different format as it seems. Threads on this forum are also not 'start post + comments' but just 'thread + postings'. However that can be worked around.

I'll see what I can come up with. Do not expect an update right away though, as I definitely want that update out the door this week.

Well since we're throwing out suggestions here.. How about an "Active Topics" feature. Similar to the global rss feature, Active Topics allows you to few all of the new/modified topics since your last visit.

That'll save me from going through every updated topic each time I come here.

Otis wrote:

I'm not sure how to implement it however . The comments are in a different format as it seems. Threads on this forum are also not 'start post + comments' but just 'thread + postings'. However that can be worked around.

Frans correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't this a case of the first message in the thread is the "Start Post" and subsequent messages are "Comments".

You must have the order of the messages in the db since you are displaying them in the correct order on the message board... therefore it seems intuitive that you could (while you are rendering the RSS feed) just check whether or not the message you are currently formatting is the first in its thread? Add a little caching and it should work a treat... I think!

Marcus

alexdresko wrote:

Otis wrote:

Good suggestion, Jeff!

prince - bow

I'm not sure how to implement it however . The comments are in a different format as it seems. Threads on this forum are also not 'start post + comments' but just 'thread + postings'. However that can be worked around.

I'll see what I can come up with. Do not expect an update right away though, as I definitely want that update out the door this week.

Well since we're throwing out suggestions here.. How about an "Active Topics" feature. Similar to the global rss feature, Active Topics allows you to few all of the new/modified topics since your last visit.

That'll save me from going through every updated topic each time I come here.

All forums which have topics which have changed since your last visit have the yellow dot in front of them, isn't that feature working for you/in your situation?

Marcus wrote:

Otis wrote:

I'm not sure how to implement it however . The comments are in a different format as it seems. Threads on this forum are also not 'start post + comments' but just 'thread + postings'. However that can be worked around.

Frans correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't this a case of the first message in the thread is the "Start Post" and subsequent messages are "Comments".

No Well, some might model it that way, I chose a different route. I have: sections, forums, threads and messages. Forum has a sectionID FK, threads have a forum FK and messages have a thread FK.

If I had modeled it differently, I would have had to split it up I think, treat the messages differently: some are startposts, others are replies.

You must have the order of the messages in the db since you are displaying them in the correct order on the message board... therefore it seems intuitive that you could (while you are rendering the RSS feed) just check whether or not the message you are currently formatting is the first in its thread? Add a little caching and it should work a treat... I think!

No the order isn't stored I store the posting date+time and order ASC on that. This has the big advantage that if I delete a posting in the thread I don't have to renumber the order numbers which can go wrong if at the same time someone is posting a message. This simple ordering also works always, no matter if some people post at exactly the same time.

Of course I can find out what the startpost is and what replies are (that is not that big of a problem). I don't recall any comment tag in RSS 2.0 however, just an url where comments are derived from, however how that has to work is not yet clear to me (haven't looked that far for it though).

Otis wrote:

Well, some might model it that way, I chose a different route. I have: sections, forums, threads and messages. Forum has a sectionID FK, threads have a forum FK and messages have a thread FK.

One possible solution:

A simple addition of a 'firstmessage' field in the threads table would do it, but it's probably a bit late now as you'd have to retrofit all the existing threads with the id of the firstmessage.

True, but that field is empty for the majority of rows as well, but it's not that hard to fill it though.

However I can retrieve the first message with an order by DESC and a top 1 , so that shouldn't be too hard to add.