Need help with my forum...

Clarkey_Boy

Hi,

I am currently writing a game (although thats nearly finished). I have a forum to go with the game, to discuss future improvements etc. I have been trying to figure out a way to make links to threads which you have already viewed change to the unviewed link format if someone posts in the thread since you last viewed it. The only way I can see is to make a new column in my users table for each thread, but that would make the database grow HUGE in a very short space of time. Would it be possible for someone to help me out on this one? My other problem is subscribing to threads... do you create several columns in the users database called, say, "subscription1", "subscription2", "subscription3" etc etc or is there another, easier way around that?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Clarkey Boy

Piranha

The first problem can be dealth with by using date/time to see if there are new threads and/or posts. Of course it is harder to mark it as read if you do it this way.

You should defenetley do a new table for the other problem. What happens if the user subscribes to more threads than you have columns for if you do it the way you suggest? It will simply not work. But by doing a new table it's possible to subscribe to as many or few threads as the user want. It's a little more work, but I promise you that it will be better and easier to change in it later (and changes are always nessecary).

Clarkey_Boy

Ah... ok. So you have a column for the username and a column for the threadname (to keep it simple) and then they just add another row to the table. Wish I'd thought of that. I think I am going to open my game for testing over the next day or two so if you want to check it out then go to www. clarkeyboy.co.uk/empires_of_conquer. The name is just temporary and the game actually has nothing to do with conquering any more, although a later version will do.

Thanks for the advice.

Clarkey Boy

Piranha

I don't know if you really ment to use username and threadname for keys, but if you did I think you should think again. It is possible that people want to change names, and it's almost sure that people will use the same threadname in different threads. My suggestion is to use integers instead as primary keys, then it's easy to make sure that you don't get into problems.

Clarkey_Boy

Yeah... I was just giving usernames as an example - I meant IDs, and would have used IDs if I had already coded it. Just gotta do that now. The only way I can think of to do the different font types for new posts is to have a row for each thread for EACH user. Then it is based on time and when a new post is posted it deletes all the records for that threadname. Then, if the count where the threadid and userid are in the same row = 0, the font is set to new posts, else the font is no new posts.

Can anyone suggest an easier way to do this? The only problem is that, over time, this method will take an AWFUL lot of space.

Clarkey Boy