I am looking for a plugin that shows each user which forums have topics and/or replies that they haven’t read, preferably just by showing them in bold. Would this plugin do that?
Thanks,
Martin
Yes, that is certainly what I am aiming for with this plugin. Would you be willing to contribute to the cost? And any other forum owners out there who would like to chip in too?
Tanya, I found a WP site that seems to have what you want–I’ve asked the owner what he uses to do it: Forum with new topics button
I’ve asked the owner what s/he uses; no reply yet, but I’m hopeful. The owner has answered a bunch of my questions very efficiently and accurately.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 3 months ago by
Starejosel.
Tanya, I’m in! It’s the only feature I’ve missed since converting to bbpress from SMF.
But it is the most important, I think. And so do the users in my forum as well. It is the easiest way to keep updated.
Most users want a quick overview of what has been going on. And not just the latest postings, but the postings they have not yet read.
Let’s do this!
Starejosel – Thanks for looking into it. From what I’ve seen of the website, it’s not running bbpress? Let me know if you find an answer though.
fripp – Thanks, let’s get a few more people on board to get this plugin up and running!
I found out something about the new posts feature–it is built into PunBB, which seems to be an alternative to BBPress. Probably useless information 🙁
No probs Starejosel, thanks for having a look into it.
Hello Tanya,
I would be interested in this, and I believe there are hundreds who also would….if they knew this discussion was going on. There have been many searches for such a thing that I’ve come across when I am doing the same search. : )
But since the people you need might not find this discussion, do you think if the wonderful Pippin (his add-ons and plugins are my favorites) goes ahead and does this, couldn’t he then sell it to individuals as he does his other creations?
Let me know if you need any help with anything, I can try and assist if I can. This would be a great plugin indeed.
Good news everyone! I have been in contact with Pippin, and he says that he will definitely like to just build it and release it and that he is going to try and get it built sometime within the next month. Thank you for the suggestion Lesley Austin, and thanks to everyone for voicing their thoughts and getting this plugin up and running.
I am really excited about this and will be a nice finishing touch to my forum (even though it’s not finished yet!).
Just let me know how to pitch in. If there was a commercial plugin that did the job, I’d easily pay $10.
So glad to hear this, Tanya. It is such a basic thing for a forum and I will look forward to being able to offer it to my members.
Thank you for pursuing it!
How does JJJ feels about this? Isn’t it a bit of a slap in the face if he (and others) put a lot of work into creating bbPress and then someone adds a tiny part and gets money for it?
Aside from that it would be a shame if functionality like that is going to be ‘pay only’.
Maybe I’m the only person thinking like that, but I just wanted to put it out there.
Hi pimarts,
I wanted this particular functionality for my forum so I went out to find a viable option to get it done within a reasonable timeframe. To me it’s the same as hiring a developer for a website if you don’t have the skills yourself.
I understand that you might not want to pay for functionality. That’s fine with me, don’t buy it. I’m sure there are bbPress plugins out there that are pay-for. I don’t see anyone complaining about that.
I can’t speak on behalf of JJJ, but you can see what he says here: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/unread-plugin-2/
Hey Tanya, I fully understand your personal consideration and it’s not meant as an attack. At all!
And to be honest, I don’t even mind to pay (or get payed) for functionality (I’m a webdeveloper myself :)), I’m just thinking out loud. About how stuff like this impacts the future of bbPress.
I might be overthinking things, I just wanted to put that thought out there.
All open source communities have the discussion about licensing and the ethics of charging for extra functionality. I see it as a sign of good health that we discuss it. I don’t see it as piggy-backing on the community to charge. We all have different motifs for being here. It’s open and free. Live and let live. A functionality or service that is charging too much will, and should probably wither.
I`m curious how this ends. Unread post plugin is thing, what stops me from migrating bbpress 1.x to 2.x.
I looked into this myself, but I couldn’t find enough documentation to get started. I’m the kind of dev who can get stuff to work if given enough time and decent code examples. Hopefully as more bbpress 2.0 plugins are released there will be more to learn from.
I would agree that this is such a core feature as users surely use this to monitor activity. There is a shortcode which lists out new posts, you can see it on my site here. A list of new posts does go some of the way to help users monitor activity. There is also the RSS feed which is what I use to monitor all posts that are made.
I wouldn’t want to second guess JJJ but from the gist of his posts I get that he is very pro 3rd party involvement. In a number of cases his response has been to say if you want a feature enough then why not get to work on it and add it (obviously easier said than done as most users don’t have the skills!). Does the fact its commercial make a difference? I don’t know, I shouldn’t think so. Commercial WordPress plugins have been around for a while and are widely used.
Hey everyone. I’m planning to start working on this sometime in the very near future (once things quiet down a bit). And I’m going to be releasing it for free on the WordPress.org repository.
Yay! Put a donate-button there. I’ll push it.
There’s one on my site: http://pippinsplugins.com
Going to start on this a little today actually 🙂
Alright, I have an initial version done and ready for anyone who wants to test it. Just download it from Github (it will be on the repo shortly).
It will add a Mark as Read/Unread link next to the Subscribe/Unsubscribe links on topics.
You can also view a list of all unread topics by going to your bbPress profile, in the same way you would view favorites or subscribed topics.
A few things I have left to do:
- Auto mark a topic as read when replying
- Auto marking a topic as read once on the page for more than a few seconds
- Create a widget to show unread topics
Anything else?
I made a look on it. I was able to activate plugin. I see Mark as Read/Unread link next to the Subscribe/Unsubscribe links on topics.
But I can not recognize unread topics, they look exactly the same like regular topics. What I did is:
-activated plugin
-used existing topic, where users X and Y are chatting
-logged in with user X and posted reply
-logged in with user Y on topics page, but dont see any difference, that one where user X replied minutes ago looks exactly same like others.
-tried to create new topic with user X and then login with user Y
Maybe I dont fully understand planed functionality? Or it depends from theme and something should be added to CSS file?
Previous plugin for old 1.x BBpress forum was working so that it marked unread topics (totaly new topics and old ones where new replies were submitted after users last visit) in different color.
“You can also view a list of all unread topics by going to your bbPress profile, in the same way you would view favorites or subscribed topics.”
Under users Y profile I dont see unread posts as well
“Unread Forum Topics
You have read every posted topic.”
