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Please restore pagination on "Active Topics" page
Mon, 2014-09-29 16:30
#1
Please restore pagination on "Active Topics" page
Mon, 2014-09-29 16:34
#2
If a thread slips off the bottom of Active Topics - because, just to invent a hypothetical example, someone opens 500 very important threads about Justin Trudeau or whatever over a short period of time - then it becomes very hard to find (unless you happen to recall the title, or the forum it was in, etc.).
Why? Because Active Topics is the only babble page that doesn't allow you to go "Next" at the bottom!
Strangely, before the so-called "upgrade" of a few years ago, this feature was available.
I've allowed a respectful number of years to elapse since the last time I humbly asked for this important feature to be restored. It can be done. Let's do it, please!
Thank you in advance. Not too far in advance, j'espère.
Mon, 2014-09-29 17:01
#3
Yes please.
Mon, 2014-09-29 17:06
#4
I would suggest going 2-4 weeks back is a good cutoff for Babble. If they turn paging on then it will sort all the posts as far back as they go, which slows down page load considerably.
Mon, 2014-09-29 17:57
#5
I would suggest going 2-4 weeks back is a good cutoff for Babble. If they turn paging on then it will sort all the posts as far back as they go, which slows down page load considerably.
Right now it's 3 days. Anything would be better than that. And I'm not sure I understand your point. If you click on a babbler's handle, for example, like say Unionist, you get the first of 4,919 pages (sheesh), with no delay in page load time whatsoever. So why not Active Topics?
Mon, 2014-09-29 18:09
#6
Yes, I agree. An obvious and necessary feature..
Mon, 2014-09-29 20:37
#7
4920 pages worth of comments, at 5 comments per page is about 25,000 comments. That's not so bad. But for forum topics, there's far more loading involved than with the comments, and it's not just one user. If they enabled paging and allowed going all the way back, page load would be very very slow.
It should be easy enough though, as long as there was a filter that didn't go back too far. Going back a few months even would proably be fine.
Mon, 2014-09-29 23:08
#8
Catchfire
Hi everyone. I agree that this would be useful but wage zombie is correct, as usual, that the reason it was removed was because it is far too much a drain on the site. In terms of putting in a compromise situation where it goes back a few weeks/months, I am told that there aren't the resources to put toward that right now because it would take a few weeks in getting it just right (even after you get the basic bones of the pagination up) and we are actually working on a major upgrade for the site that is taking the bulk of our very limited tech budget.
So, I guess what I am unfortunately and unhappily saying is: it's tough nuts for all of us.
Mon, 2014-09-29 23:24
#9
What's the major upgrade? Moving to Drupal 7?
Mon, 2014-09-29 23:29
#10
Catchfire
You guessed it first time!
Mon, 2014-09-29 23:33
#11
And I'm not sure I understand your point. If you click on a babbler's handle, for example, like say Unionist, you get the first of 4,919 pages (sheesh), with no delay in page load time whatsoever. So why not Active Topics?
I can elaborate a bit more. The posts people make are stored in the database, and the numeric user id is stored with the post. If it was just a case of loading posts with user ids, things would be faster. But, in the Active Topics list, the idea is to show the username, not the uid. So, that means that the database query that's used to generate the active topics list also has to join with the user table to get the username. The more tables you add to a DB query, the more it slows down, and as the amount of data (ie. number of posts) increases, the time to do the calculation increases considerably. It doesn't matter that all those usernames wouldn't be shown on every page...they are still a part of the database query that ends up sorting all the posts.
So I have seen this before and it is easily fixed by setting a filter on how far to go back. However, I can understand that if the tech team is focussed on getting a major upgrade out then this isn't going to get much attention.
Mon, 2014-09-29 23:36
#12
You guessed it first time!
Well that will be exciting. Presumably this means Rabble will move to a responsive theme, making the site a lot easier to use via phone.
There are other potential benefits from moving to Drupal 7, however I suspect we are unlikely to see much extra stuff in Babble.