# TUG BBS wiped out 4 of my 6 pages of new posts



## bobpark56 (Mar 11, 2016)

Hello...I logged onto TUG today and asked for New Posts. Got 6 pages worth. I processed 2 of these, albeit with some not lengthy delays, and then, when I asked for page 3, found that that and the final 3 pages had been wiped out.

Is this really the way TUG BBS is supposed to work?


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## csxjohn (Mar 11, 2016)

Did you check the "keep me logged in" box when you signed in?  It may make a difference.


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## Makai Guy (Mar 11, 2016)

On this board, the box is labeled "Remember me".

'New Posts' runs a search for all posts with a timestamp _since your previous login_.  There are a couple of considerations relating to this.
*Cookies*
Note that your login information is maintained by a small file the bbs places on your computer called a "cookie".  If this cookie somehow becomes corrupted or gets out of sync, you may have trouble with New Posts.  See this post (actually written about a different cookie-related problem) for information on deleting/resetting your cookies from the bbs.


*Auto Log Off/On*
The board automatically logs you off after 30 minutes of inactivity at the bbs' end.  Once you've downloaded a page, if you spend 30 minutes or more to read it, all the activity takes place on your computer, not at TUG's end, so you will be logged off automatically.  30 minutes spent composing a message prior to submission likewise is activity on your end, not at the bbs' end, and will result in you being logged off automatically.  

If you logged in originally with "remember me" checked, when you next try to do something on the board, your system will log you back in automatically and from your end it will appear as if you had never been logged off at all.  But your login cookie will have been reset in the process, so the threshold timestamp for what will be shown to you as 'new posts' will have been changed.


*Other Logins*
If you come to the board in some other manner, such as clicking a link in an email to view a new private message or to visit a thread or forum to which you have subscribed, or as a result of going to a link found in an online search engine, THAT counts as a login and resets your login-tracking cookie also.


*The best way around all this* is to go to New Posts first thing upon arriving. Then don't just click on a post to view it in the same window, returning to New Posts via the browser Back button. You run the risk of timing out and the rebuild of the New Posts screen when you return to it having dropped off a bunch of earlier messages.

Instead, right-click (or whatever mechanism is appropriate for your computer and operating system) to open the post in a new window or tab. When you're done, just close that window or tab and return to the New Posts screen in its original, unchanged, window or tab. 

But if you didn't do this, and/or you find your new posts list truncated for some other reason, the Quick Links drop down menu also includes a link for "Today's Posts" which will list everything entered in the last 24 hours.


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## bobpark56 (Mar 12, 2016)

*So, are you saying it's all my fault?*

I do have the "Remember me" box checked. 

Sounds like you are saying that TUG wiping out 4 pages is all my fault. Is that really the case?

--bp




Makai Guy said:


> On this board, the box is labeled "Remember me".
> 
> 'New Posts' runs a search for all posts with a timestamp _since your previous login_.  There are a couple of considerations relating to this.
> *Cookies*
> ...


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## DeniseM (Mar 12, 2016)

Bob - Nothing was wiped out - the posts are all still there - we don't remove posts.  

But depending on _how you use the search function,_ the posts may not have come up as "new posts."

In Makai Guy's post above, take a close look at the 3rd paragraph that details the best way to us the New Post function.

In simplest terms:  Once you look at a post, it is no longer a "new" post, and it won't come up when you use the New Post Search Function.  But it is still there, in the forum where it was posted.


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## Makai Guy (Mar 12, 2016)

Nobody is saying anything is anybody's fault.

If you bring up the New Posts list, and then view individual threads listed there in their own separate tabs or windows, you can then return to the original New Post window/tab and view it exactly as it was before, because you are actually viewing the page as you downloaded it a few minutes ago.  That's what I always try to do here.

If instead you view a listed thread by going to it in the same tab/window in which you were viewing the New Post list, and then go back to reload the New Posts list in that same window/tab, you can get a new rebuilt copy of the list which reflects the conditions existing right then, not when you first downloaded the list.  When I screw up and do that, usually bringing up the Today's Posts list meets my needs.  If it's been more than 24 hours since I was last on the board I might miss a few posts, but nearly all active threads will be represented.

Without knowing how you are doing things, there's nothing more I can say, except that nothing has been deliberately changed at this end.


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## csxjohn (Mar 15, 2016)

Makai Guy said:


> [*]*The best way around all this* is to go to New Posts first thing upon arriving. Then don't just click on a post to view it in the same window, returning to New Posts via the browser Back button. You run the risk of timing out and the rebuild of the New Posts screen when you return to it having dropped off a bunch of earlier messages.
> 
> Instead, right-click (or whatever mechanism is appropriate for your computer and operating system) to open the post in a new window or tab. When you're done, just close that window or tab and return to the New Posts screen in its original, unchanged, window or tab.
> 
> But if you didn't do this, and/or you find your new posts list truncated for some other reason, the Quick Links drop down menu also includes a link for "Today's Posts" which will list everything entered in the last 24 hours.[/list]



Thanks to this thread I now know how to do this without losing pages on my search of new and today's posts.

thank you


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## bobpark56 (Mar 17, 2016)

Makai Guy said:


> Nobody is saying anything is anybody's fault.
> 
> If you bring up the New Posts list, and then view individual threads listed there in their own separate tabs or windows, you can then return to the original New Post window/tab and view it exactly as it was before, because you are actually viewing the page as you downloaded it a few minutes ago.  That's what I always try to do here.
> 
> <snip>




This is what I usually do, and I did it here. The problem is that 4 pages of "new posts" that I had yet to review disappeared...apparently treated at old posts at that point. I was not able to recover them, so I quit TUG's user group...to wait for another day. But is this the way it's supposed to work? If so, why?


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## DeniseM (Mar 17, 2016)

bobpark56 said:


> I was not able to recover them, so I quit TUG's user group...to wait for another day. But is this the way it's supposed to work? If so, why?



Bob - None of us were there, so we have no way of knowing exactly what happened.  Dave has explained the most likely scenarios, above.  The most likely cause was operator error.   

However, there was no need to sign off - if that ever happens again, here is a good back up plan:


> But if you didn't do this, and/or you find your new posts list truncated for some other reason, the Quick Links drop down menu also includes a link for *"Today's Posts"* which will list everything entered in the last 24 hours.


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## Makai Guy (Mar 17, 2016)

bobpark56 said:


> This is what I usually do, and I did it here. The problem is that 4 pages of "new posts" that I had yet to review disappeared...apparently treated at old posts at that point. I was not able to recover them, so I quit TUG's user group...to wait for another day. But is this the way it's supposed to work? If so, why?



I hardly ever use New Posts, so I've had to dig into this a bit.

The New Posts function is run via the bbs' internal search capabilities.  What follows applies to searches in general, not just New Posts searches.

Your search criteria are saved under a unique search id number. The search results page is called by a URL containing this search id number, like so:
*[noparse]http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/search.php?searchid=#######[/noparse]*​
Once you've downloaded such a results page, as long as you keep it in its own window or tab, it won't change.

If the search results cover more than one page, the URL for additional pages will still reference this search id number, like so:
*[noparse]http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/search.php?searchid=#######&pp=40&page=2[/noparse]*​The pp=40 means there are 40 results displayed per page, and page=2 is which page of the results to display.

The search id number is retained for one hour.  When the hour is up, information regarding this search id is dropped from the server's memory, so clicking on a page link that references that search id number will now fail.

So if you originally had 6 pages of results, but lost 4 of them, you must have still been on the second page of results when your hour ran out.

The one hour period is hard coded into the bbs software and they provide no interface for changing it.  The number of results per page IS settable, however, so I've now increased it from 40 to 100, which should ease the problem somewhat.

*To completely get around the problem*, all I can see to do when you have a large number of results, is:
FIRST load EACH page of results into its own tab or window, as once you've grabbed them you've got them.
THEN bring up each result you wish to read in its own tab or window as discussed previously.


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## frankf3 (Apr 20, 2016)

Makai Guy said:


> I hardly ever use New Posts, so I've had to dig into this a bit.
> 
> 
> *To completely get around the problem*, all I can see to do when you have a large number of results, is:
> ...



Makai Guy, thanks for the details on how the new posts function works, interesting. 

If I've not been on for a while, what you've stated here as a work around is exactly what I do!   I'd experienced what the OP mentioned (multi page new posts result, taken over an hour to go from page x to page y and lost the remaining results, now realizing the search id expired).  The work around is is a good solution (at least for me).


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