Subscription Email Links

[SupaDupaCheez]

This may have been covered but I couldn't find it.

I know nothing about coding/programming so please keep that in mind....

Just wondering if it is possible to have the links in subscription emails link to the actual post that generated the email notification?

For short threads, it really is a non-issue. For threads that go for multiple pages (and are growing fast), it can be a real pain in the butt to find where you last read.

Maybe I'm missing a feature or some other way to do this.

Thanks,
SupaDupaCheez

 

[SagaLore]

Its really tricky to do, and usually not worth the processing overhead to accomplish it. If you have board software that allows people to customize how many posts per page they want, then every URL has to be calculated on a per-user basis.

For example, by default this is page 1:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=38&threadid=1780948&enterthread=y

Then for me this is page 2:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...&STARTPAGE=2&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

For anybody else, it could be STARTPAGE=3, 4, etc.

phpBB and some other boards get around this by using post IDs, such as /viewthread.php?post=37, and that will bring you to the proper position in the thread based on your profile settings.

For fusetalk to accomplish this properly, they'd have to overhaul the URL generation routines. For being a high-end commerical product, I'm surprised it is as sloppy as it is with URLs.

They could get around this by writing a custom script that does nothing more than redirect. So it would be something like:
http://forums.anandtech.com/emailnotifi...px?catid=38&threadid=1780948&postid=37

This would reference the member's profile settings, then use a 301 redirect to the normal URL as I pasted above. That gets them to the proper page. But you still need to make a minor change the way messageview.aspx generates URLs. Every single post needs to have a # bookmark. So then the redirected URL would be:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...AGE=2&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear#post37

 

[EagleKeeper]

There is usually a little tag on each post that will say "New".

Jump to the last post in a thread and then walk backwards to find the post the you last read.

How you choose to walk backwards, is up to you and your browser.

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
There is usually a little tag on each post that will say "New".

Jump to the last post in a thread and then walk backwards to find the post the you last read.

How you choose to walk backwards, is up to you and your browser.

Hey you're right... that makes things easier!

If they do what I suggested above, but forget about tagging each post with a numeric bookmark, they could just tag each post that has "new" on it with a bookmark of "new". The browser should jump to the first one if a url has #new on the end of it. 🙂