Marking messages as "read" when they aren't

College Confidential Community
1

Is there a profile setting anyplace that will allow me to leave posts marked as unread (bolded) when I leave and return to the forum or am inactive for more than about 10 minutes? Other forums I belong to that use the same software as CC only mark posts as read when I actually read them (city-data.com, for example) and if I leave the site’s tab open while I browse to another website or walk away from the computer for a while, the unread posts remain in bold.

On CC, though, if I log on and only have 5 minutes to read the Parents Forum, for example, and don’t have time to read the new posts in the Cafe at that sitting, then when I come back later in the day, the new posts that I didn’t get to read earlier are now un-bolded so I can’t really tell at a glance what I haven’t read yet. And if I’m inactive on a forum page for >10 minutes and I refresh the screen, the posts that were bolded earlier are now marked as read. It’s very frustrating!

Is that clear as mud? I don’t know how else to describe what I’m talking about.

2

Hello patsmom…sorry for the delay in replying. The forum uses new/old as opposed to unread/read when deciding what to bold and unbold. Any threads with new posts since your last log in will be bolded. However, as soon as you log out the process starts over. If you log in one minute later only those threads with posts since your last log in one minute earlier will be bolded. It does not equate to what you have or haven’t read, though.

I am not aware of any setting on My Control Panel to change this behavior, and have reached out to our tech folks to see if there are any options. I do agree it is difficult to keep track of where you left off.

3

Hi patsmom…I actually just heard back from our tech folks and there is unfortunately no current way to track read and unread posts. It is likely those other vBulletin sites you mention are using a plug-in to achieve this behavior, but the resources needed to track read/unread data for all of our users would be quite significant.

Thanks!