I got to participate in the second phpBB podcast! WooT!

I’m still not very familiar with phpBB3 code, but I have become much more familiar with phpBB3 features. In my role as a moderator at phpbb.com I use phpBB3 as a moderator, but I am also a user. So when the podcast team came out with the question, “What is your favorite feature of phpBB3?”, I definitely had an opinion. What did I pick?

To me the best features of phpBB3 are those that have changed the way I use the board, and in a good way. Two features came to mind. The first is the “You’ve posted here” feature, and I have already written that as a MOD for phpBB2. It is, in fact, one of the examples I use for where one additional smaller query is far better than adding an outer join and a new table to an existing larger query. But I digress.

No, the feature that has most changed how I use phpbb.com is the “Read Tracking” feature. In phpBB2 when you log on your “last visit” information is updated with the current date and time. Then that value combined with some cookie manipulation is used to track which topics you have read during your session. When you log out, all remaining unread posts are marked as read.

phpBB3 offers two very important improvements over phpBB2 in this area. Each post is tracked as to whether you have read it or not. More importantly the marks are not reset when you log out. In my role as a moderator this is very important. I can quickly scan the MOD forums (which I like to read and participate in, but don’t really moderate) and then mark the forum as read. But for the phpBB Discussion forums (which are the main area that I moderate) I read each and every topic. In the past I had to dedicate a large block of time every time I went to the board so as to not skip anything. Now if I get a notification of a topic reply, or just have a few spare minutes, I can go visit the board without losing my place in the “moderation queue” that is to say the unread posts in the phpBB Discussion forums.

And it is a subtle but very important distinction that this is unread posts and not unread topics. Why is this significant?

In phpBB2 there is a tiny orange marker that links to the first “unread” post. In phpBB2 you can click that link and go to the first post since you last logged in and read the rest of the subject. But what happens if someone else posts during your session? The orange icon reappears, but it still links to the first unread post since your last session, not since you last read the topic. In phpBB3 when the orange icon (or its equivalent) appears, it will take you to the first unread post. Brilliant! (I’ve seen some code that is supposed to change the behavior or the “first unread post” indicator for phpBB2 but have never had a chance to try it out.)

That one feature has changed the way I use the board. And in a good way. For that reason, I named it the #1 favorite feature of mine from phpBB3.