As you may have noticed, this new software has tons of features. There are several ways to view posts, in your control panel you can set numerous options, and if I wanted to, I could even present a variety of "skins" to let people choose how the boards look for them. I actually experimented with a medieval one that was all brown and looked like a parchment scroll.
Anyway, one notable aspect of this software is that by default it lists threads in the order of their last reply. So whatever thread has the most recent response is listed on top. The reason for that is to make sure that popular threads don't just scroll off the page as they did in the old WebBBS. This way, popular threads can stay on top for weeks or months. In another vBulletin board I frequent, there's a thread that has been on the front page for a year an a half and has had over 100,000 views and almost 4,000 replies.
The problem with the "last response first gets you on top" is that it allows "bumping." "Bumping" means anyone can bring an old thread back to the top simply by replying to it. Usually, that is not abused, but it can be abused. For example, for people posting on the Paysite Board, it may be tempting to "bump" their own (or favorite) thread back up on top. Which isn't really fair to the other women who advertise for their sites, and it also cuts down on the number of new, original threads with new material.
So I decided to install a hack that prevents bumping on the Paysite Board. Threads there are listed in the order they were submitted, regardless of replies.
What do you think of all this?
Conrad
PS: And, oh, I used the new spellchecker on this post; it found three errors even though I usually try my best...
Anyway, one notable aspect of this software is that by default it lists threads in the order of their last reply. So whatever thread has the most recent response is listed on top. The reason for that is to make sure that popular threads don't just scroll off the page as they did in the old WebBBS. This way, popular threads can stay on top for weeks or months. In another vBulletin board I frequent, there's a thread that has been on the front page for a year an a half and has had over 100,000 views and almost 4,000 replies.
The problem with the "last response first gets you on top" is that it allows "bumping." "Bumping" means anyone can bring an old thread back to the top simply by replying to it. Usually, that is not abused, but it can be abused. For example, for people posting on the Paysite Board, it may be tempting to "bump" their own (or favorite) thread back up on top. Which isn't really fair to the other women who advertise for their sites, and it also cuts down on the number of new, original threads with new material.
So I decided to install a hack that prevents bumping on the Paysite Board. Threads there are listed in the order they were submitted, regardless of replies.
What do you think of all this?
Conrad
PS: And, oh, I used the new spellchecker on this post; it found three errors even though I usually try my best...
