Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

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suzyne
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Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by suzyne » 2024-04-16, 23:11

When I want to see what's new on the forum, before I always used New Posts, but now I have been trying out Unread Posts.

In terms of minimising the load on the forum, which of these Quick Links is the kindest to use?
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Re: Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2024-04-16, 23:16

I don't think there's much difference.
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Re: Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by RealityRipple » 2024-04-16, 23:27

If it's sanely designed, it'd just be a different column for the WHERE query.

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Re: Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by athenian200 » 2024-04-16, 23:42

Well, it probably doesn't make a difference, but if it did make one, I would tend to assume unread posts would be a bit more complicated simply because it has to construct which posts you individually have not read, whereas if it only needs to return new posts, it just focuses on recent datestamps that would be the same for everyone.

But then again, I don't know much about databases, what gets cached, how expensive multiple hits for a query are to display, and what is or isn't computationally expensive, so if MC says there's not much of a difference, you should probably take his word over mine, which is just a guess anyway.
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Re: Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2024-04-17, 00:32

MariaDB is exceedingly good at efficient querying, so any difference there would be, would be mostly just academic and have no real impact for something the size of a forum.
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Re: Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by andyprough » 2024-04-17, 04:55

I had always heard that it's all the avatars (and to a lesser degree signatures) that are the bigger burden on forum software.

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Re: Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by Lucio Chiappetti » 2024-04-17, 11:37

Cannot comment. I kept display of avatars and signatures disabled :D
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Re: Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2024-04-17, 11:41

I don't think we have to worry about what exactly is causing the most or least load per request, at least not until traffic would probably 10-fold or so...
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Re: Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by back2themoon » 2024-04-17, 12:08

Thankfully, this remains mostly a text-driven forum.

Now imagine those abominations containing chat-boxes, all kinds of useless widgets, awards/badges/achievements every x number of posts (who the hell started this BS anyway?) with promotions and demotions, huge animated GIFs/stickers/whatever, upvotes/downvotes, music playing in the background, YouTube/Twitch embedded videos all over etc. etc.

Yuck!

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Re: Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by moonbat » 2024-04-17, 22:25

back2themoon wrote:
2024-04-17, 12:08
awards/badges/achievements every x number of posts
We do have that here ;)
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Re: Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by suzyne » 2024-04-18, 08:12

moonbat wrote:
2024-04-17, 22:25
back2themoon wrote:
2024-04-17, 12:08
awards/badges/achievements every x number of posts
We do have that here ;)
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Re: Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by moonbat » 2024-04-18, 08:35

suzyne wrote:
2024-04-18, 08:12
No one wants to be neophyte Moongazer forever. :D
Poast moar ;)
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Re: Which puts the most pressure on the forum, New Posts or Unread Posts?

Unread post by back2themoon » 2024-04-18, 11:04

moonbat wrote:
2024-04-17, 22:25
back2themoon wrote:
2024-04-17, 12:08
awards/badges/achievements every x number of posts
We do have that here ;)
Not really what I meant though. These are simple "text categories" that occur silently and automatically in the background.

I'm talking about actual graphic badges with pop-up messages that inform you about your "promotion", urging you to achieve the next one ("10 more posts to earn the next award") etc.

"First post badge", "First like badge", "Tenth post badge", "First private message badge"... I'm sure you get the idea.