Board Bug ?

[Applewood]

In the main contents page, how long as the "number of views" field been defined as "number of replies + 1" ?

[frozax]

It has already been discussed here:
http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=10684

But I really think something should be made about it as it's interesting to have the number of views of threads.

[jeb_]

But I really think something should be made about it as it's interesting to have the number of views of threads.

Or remove the "views" column from the table so we can avoid a 4th topic on the subject ;)

[Applewood]

Or maybe just fix it ;)

Sorry if this is old news, but that just surprises me still more that it's not been addressed tbh.

[Pyabo]

And how would you propose this gets "fixed" AND maintain the speedy performance that caching provides?

I'd rather have a responsive, efficient reading/posting experience than see how many people have read a thread.

[Applewood]

I got no idea, I don't know anything about all these TLA languages.

[jeb_]

And how would you propose this gets "fixed" AND maintain the speedy performance that caching provides?

I'd rather have a responsive, efficient reading/posting experience than see how many people have read a thread.

Well... actually it's quite simple. Obviously the cache is updated when somebody replies to a thread, so it has to update the view count as well. Instead of showing "number of replies + 1", it could - hold your breath - show the number of views (up to that point)! Counting views shouldn't affect the page cache, unless I'm mistaken.

[ChrisP]

It does require you to visit the database to update the counter though, which is a performance hit if the cache itself isn't stored in the database. You get all the overhead of another TCP connection as well as the time it takes to update the database. Doesn't sound like much, but every little delay adds up...

More likely it's just not considered a priority to fix it. :) It is a "nice to have", but only a "nice to have", if you know what I mean...

[Pyabo]

jeb, you've solved the problem!!! All you have to do is update the DB every time someone clicks on the thread! And then update the cache each time the DB is updated! :rolleyes:

For the humor imparied: I am being facetious.

[electronicStar]

If the DB is cached then why not update the cache then update the DB like once a day during low traffic?

[Pyabo]

It's not the DB that is cached, it's the pages themselves... there is no writeback to the DB when a thread is read, and that's where some of the performance gain comes from. Ideally, the php runtime is entirely removed from a simple thread view, hence a huge performance boost and no DB access.

To get an accurate thread view count you'd have to look at the web log.

[TimS]

Thanks in part to this thread I've realized that I can double the FPS of the game I'm working on if I don't update my HUD or the positions of enemy characters! Yay! :rolleyes:

Seriously -- if the forums cannot handle forum-like functionality... is something wrong with vBulletin? Or is it that indiegamer has outgrown less expensive hosting options (I could believe that one) ? If the latter is the case, I'd rather see a big ol' banner ad at the top and a first-rate forum than no ads and a broken one (just my singular opinion there).

Knowing the number of thread views is fun!

-Tim

[Chris Evans]

Personally, I liked having a functional thread view count particularly in the News/Feedback forum. It gave a good indication of how much interest there was in a topic/game even if there wasn't a lot of replies. Sometimes you also want to know why a topic doesn't have many replies. Is it because very few people bothered to click thru or was it because the actual topic/screen shots were not interesting. Thread views is a pretty useful tool to help gauge these things when you make a feedback/announcement topic.

I hope it gets fixed soon. I've seen much larger forums have it functional, so I don't see why it can't work here.