Question on the board itself

[LaundroMat]

Does anyone know where vBulletin stores what messages are new for a user and which ones aren't?
If I visit the board today and read half of the topics containing new messages, will by those topics have no 'new messages' icon by tomorrow (provided no new messages were added, natch) or will the new messages icons remain until I actually read them?
Consequently, when does the system decide that a forum (such as Off-Topic, can't think of another classification right now) has new messages?
Is it:
- checking last visit date of the user & comparing them with the date of the message added last?
- a flag for each topic/user indicating whether the user has read the message/topic?

Why do I want to know? Well, I'm just fiddling about with forum systems, and as vBulletin looks to me as one of the best board systems around, I'd like to take it as an example (although I'm fiddling about in asp instead of php). I should have a look at PHP however...

Thanks in advance.

[RCK]

Originally posted by LaundroMat
[B]Does anyone know where vBulletin stores what messages are new for a user and which ones aren't?[b]
It is actually done with the "last visit" time of the user, comparing it with the date/time of the new posts.
If I visit the board today and read half of the topics containing new messages, will by those topics have no 'new messages' icon by tomorrow (provided no new messages were added, natch) or will the new messages icons remain until I actually read them?
no all those new unread topic will be mark as read tomorrow.
user have actually 15 minuts of inactivity to considered that all those message are "read"
Consequently, when does the system decide that a forum (such as Off-Topic, can't think of another classification right now) has new messages?
comparing timestamp of messages & user last visit date&time.

- checking last visit date of the user & comparing them with the date of the message added last?
yes, vB use this method.

Why do I want to know? Well, I'm just fiddling about with forum systems, and as vBulletin looks to me as one of the best board systems around, I'd like to take it as an example (although I'm fiddling about in asp instead of php). I should have a look at PHP however...
I'm both coding in PHP & ASP, and of course I prefer php :)
(more easy, more powerfull, more docs on the net, linux compliant)

[LaundroMat]

I'm at a loss at how to install all that.

Excuse me if this is way out of topic, but:
Currently I'm running PWS on a Win98 system, and that went super easy in order to have local ASP pages. On the other hand, with PHP, I just don't see how I should begin with it.
I'm a total loser when it comes to servers and all that; I just don't see how I can let PWS (or another Server utility) understand that I want to give PHP a try.

Anyway, thanks for the excellent answers to my previous questions!

[RCK]

so here I go with the second bath of excellent reply :p

To make php dev on your local computer, just download & install the excellent french package EasyPhp (http://www.easyphp.org/)

Once done, you will have apache 1.3.20 - php 4.0.6 - mysql 3.23.40 - phpmyadmin 2.2.0rc4 running on your system, so you will be able to test your php work without any external server.

note: "Download" in French is "Téléchargement", and the last version of phpEasy is 1.5

[LaundroMat]

Thanks, I'll have a look tomorrow (drink-fest planned for tonight).

Oh, and don't bother translating French for me (although I appreciate it :)): I'm the only Dutch-speaking guy in this Brussels office here :D

[RCK]

- 'localhost' is good to access the mysql server
- no need to user name to access the mysql DB, only 'root' for name and '' for password
- don't forget to create one database first with the mysql interface.

So in order to connect to the Mysql database, you should use something like that:
<?php
$mysql_link=mysql_connect('localhost', 'root', '')
$db=mysql_select_db('your database name', $mysql_link);
?>

[andreas]

why not move this to 'abime.net'? It doesn't belong here quite well, methinks :smileek