New Posts - Selected Forum Sort

glenn bradley

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There are probably a few of my fellow geeks out there doing this but I thought it might be worth a mention. When I am pressed for time but want to do a quick check on the forum I exclude certain forums from my search. As our software doesn't offer this as a feature, I just use some short cuts like (the first two slashes are reversed to allow the whole URL to post):

http:\\www.familywoodworking.org/forums/search.php?do=getnew&exclude=36,39

Now, this is just an example so don't anyone get their feathers mussed. I randomly did this one to give me new posts in everything except "Old Iron" and "Handtool Project Showcase". The 'exclude' operand can be flipped to 'include' depending what you're after. For example:

http:\\www.familywoodworking.org/forums/search.php?do=getnew&include=1,24,34,35'

You can attach variations to whatever mechanism works on your OS, Browser, etc. Desktop Shortcuts, Bookmarks, Link flyouts, whatever you normally use for this function.
 
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Glenn - I need a bit more information on how to do this. One thing that makes your posting difficult to understand is that the URL is shortened so I can't see exactly what you did. And when I click on it, the exclude function is used, but the URL that appears in my browser is not what you had, but a search URL.

Also, what identifies the different sub-forums? It appears that you're using numbers. How do I know what numbers apply to which sub-forum?

While I have questions, I really appreciate you posting that technique. Thanks!!

Mike
 
Aha! So there's an exclude as well, huh?

VERY cool. I've been using include on SMC for a long time now, but when they add new forums and don't announce it, I have to revise things. I'll be switching over to exclude asap. :)
 
Mike, let's see if this works without truncating the URL...

http:// www. familywoodworking.org/forums/search.php?do=getnew&exclude=36,39

and

http:// www. familywoodworking.org/forums/search.php?do=getnew&include=1,24,34,35

Also, here's how you identify the subforum numbers. When you go into a subforum from the main page, the URL in the address box of your browser looks something like this:

http:// familywoodworking.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=16

The "f=16" is your magic number. (BTW, 16 is the Carpentry subforum.)


I didn't know this could be done, Glenn. Cool idea. :thumb:
 
Glenn - I need a bit more information on how to do this. One thing that makes your posting difficult to understand is that the URL is shortened so I can't see exactly what you did. And when I click on it, the exclude function is used, but the URL that appears in my browser is not what you had, but a search URL.

Also, what identifies the different sub-forums? It appears that you're using numbers. How do I know what numbers apply to which sub-forum?

While I have questions, I really appreciate you posting that technique. Thanks!!

Mike

Sorry Mike. The shortening of the URL is a part of our forum software. I exchanged the // for a \\ and this seemed to allow the whole URL to be posted in my OP (but with the wrong slashes of course). So, now that we have the whole string, you want everything except the numbers at the end. You will want to add the numbers of the forums that you want to include or exclude.

The numbers begin immediately following the &exclude or &include operand, no spaces, just commas between numbers if you have more than one. You can find out which sub-forum is which number by rolling over it on the main screen (http://familywoodworking.org/forums/index.php) and looking at the info at the lower left of your screen in IE or Firefox. For example if I roll over General Woodworking Q&A, I see this at the lower left of my screen (reversed slashes again): http:\\familywoodworking.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=2

So if I wanted to see all new posts except for General Woodworking, I would use this as the URL (I'm using the reversed slashes so you can see the whole string) http:\\familywoodworking.org/forums/search.php?do=getnew&exclude=2
 
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Thanks Glenn and Vaughn. I understand. That's good information to know. I wasn't aware of the include and exclude functions. Don't know if I'll use it but it's nice to know in case I need it (e.g., hot thread on an issue I'm not interested in).

Mike
 
Glenn / Vaughn,

Is the machanism that assigns the numbers to the forums static or open-ended? Let me try asking a better way, if someone creates a new sub-forum does the system automatically assign an unused number? If someone deletes a sub-forum (not sure if this is even an option) will the system re-use the number associated with the deleted sub-forum? And if not, is there any possibility of the system re-assigning numbers to all the sub-forums that came later in the numbering scheme, IF a sub-forum was removed? Just trying to get a handle on the inner workings so I can see if using the same request string would obtain what I'm after.

Thanks guys,
 
Lee - the number it uses is the primary key for that forum's record in the database ... USUALLY (and i suspect 99.9999% of the cases we'll ever come acrossed), those numbers are incremental and never reuse numbers that were deleted. So - the long way to answer your question: The number for a forum today will always be the same - unless someone moves all the threads out, deletes it, recreates it, then moves all the threads back in - that'd give the forum a new ID - but from a DB perspective, that's a new forum.
 
Lee, I think Jason nailed it. (I'm pretty ignorant about the inner working of the forum software and database.) From the Admin Control Panel, I can assign the order that the forums are displayed, but from what I've see that doesn't change the forum number. Also, the existing forum numbers don't seem to follow much of a pattern, but I suspect they are numbered in the order they were created. I've slept since then, so I don't remember for sure the order in which I created the forums, but I do notice that the parent forum to the General Woodworking area is number 1, and some of the forums added later on have the higher numbers.
 
Thanks all,

Cool. I really like the power this affords us to search for new posts with control on which specific areas, within our forum, search engine should look. Thanks for taking the time and effort to provide the detailed answers.

Now, with that established, is there anyone who can run a report with current assignments (1 = ?, 2 = ?, ... 16 = Carpentry, ... I read in the earlier post that the number at the end of the URL is the sub-forum identifier. I know that with some DBs it would fairly easy to spit out a very basic report with this info. If someone has access to run the report and save it as csv or one of the other common formats I'd be glad to drop it into Excel and if not too large put it on the site for others to utilize. I know things change as soon as someone creates a new sub-forum but it might be nice to have it as reference now that everyone is aware of the capabilities.

Thoughts??
 
The Admin Control Panel doesn't have an option (that I've found) to run reports. I'm sure a decent database jockey could run one directly from the DB, but due to my lack of experience with database stuff, I don't know how to do it. (Due to our collective inexperience, we're all pretty cautious when it comes to monkeying with the database.)

You can get the numbers pretty quickly doing it manually, though. If you hover your mouse cursor over the links for each forum on the home page, the URL is displayed at the bottom of your browser. (Or at least it is with Firefox.) If I wasn't buried with work right now, I could do it manually faster than it'd take me to figure out how to do it the automated way.
 
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