Custom Posts Per Page User Setting

[DeltaHF]

While going over XenForo's configuration options, it suddenly occurred to me that users cannot configure their own custom "posts per page" setting, and with only one global default.

Considering I've been using vBulletin for about 10 years now, I know some my users are going to be absolutely livid when they realize they can no longer change this on their own.

I'd like to see it in XF soon.

 

[Dragonfruit]

There's an addon for most things, but I've got enough paid addons already and this is really basic forum functionality that is effectively half-broken in XF when compared with virtually every other forum software out there. IMO this is something that needs to be fixed in the core, not ignored in perpetuity. The notion that everyone should just pick a global number of posts when starting a forum and never change it again when there are literally thousands of forum settings we change on a regular basis for everything else is extremely odd, to say the least. And completely contrary to the general notion that practically every forum setting is changeable in such a way that it doesn't break things.

I wouldn't complain if this was the norm across every other forum software as well, but XF is clearly the odd man out here.

I don't agree. It's more consistent that this isn't core, because when a user says there's a problem with a post in a specific thread on a specific page, that causes consistency issues because everyone can have a different amount of posts per page, thus everyone's page numbers are different.

I think it's better to just adjust the default setting to a more neutral value that better suits everyone overall.

I don't feel this needs to be core, I wouldn't want it turned on.

 

[Gladius]

You don't seem to understand that every post has a unique ID that should always be used in permalinks; there is absolutely no need and no sensible reason anyone would use textual descriptions of post locations when each post already has a unique ID that is independent of its location in the thread. You seem to think that you would be losing something if this was made to work properly; you wouldn't. You could keep using the same setting you have forever and disallow users to change their own posts per page setting and nothing would change for you. It would just fix the issue for everyone else.

 

[Dragonfruit]

You don't seem to understand that every post has a unique ID that should always be used in permalinks; there is absolutely no need and no sensible reason anyone would use textual descriptions of post locations when each post already has a unique ID that is independent of its location in the thread. You seem to think that you would be losing something if this was made to work properly; you wouldn't. You could keep using the same setting you have forever and disallow users to change their own posts per page setting and nothing would change for you. It would just fix the issue for everyone else.

I do understand that, I've been in Administration for nearly 20 years. The thing is, people don't have a habit of providing links. I always have to ask, the first thing they mainly do is describe where the issue is.

I even have notices on the reports asking what information to provide, but that still happens. It's human nature, habits, etc.

This really does seem like an unnecessary feature to be a core. I don't feel majority of users care about changing it.

 

[Gladius]

The feature is already there, it's just not working properly. Again, you wouldn't be losing anything by having it work properly for everyone else, even if you don't need it. The majority of users (read admins, as users can't change it currently) can't change the setting because changing it breaks things as it is currently implemented. Obviously a catch-22 situation. It's a setting that seems to be freely changeable as thousands of others in XF, but if you change it, you quickly realize that you've broken things and immediately revert it. You can call that "working as intended/designed", but objectively speaking, it's not really working properly and/or the design is flawed.

 

[Dragonfruit]

The feature is already there, it's just not working properly. Again, you wouldn't be losing anything by having it work properly for everyone else, even if you don't need it. The majority of users (read admins, as users can't change it currently) can't change the setting because changing it breaks things as it is currently implemented. Obviously a catch-22 situation. It's a setting that seems to be freely changeable as thousands of others in XF, but if you change it, you quickly realize that you've broken things and immediately revert it. You can call that "working as intended/designed", but objectively speaking, it's not really working properly and/or the design is flawed.

I understand, all I'm saying is I don't agree this needs to be core. If it gets added, obviously I'd disable it. Or similar to when I used MyBB, I completely removed it via the Templates to block users from being able to adjust it.

Things are implemented by the Devs based on upvotes on suggestions, so the fact that there's only been 15, also means the demand hasn't been as high as you think it would be.

 

[Gladius]

I didn't say that the demand is high for it and the devs don't necessarily implement/fix things based on the number of votes alone. Most admins probably don't even realize that there is an issue with this as they haven't experienced it first-hand as it's not a setting that changes very often. And those who never needed to change it don't care if it stays half-broken or not. I'm not even talking about the custom posts per page user setting; I'd be happy just having the global setting not break things when changed. In most situations I wouldn't allow users to freely change this, but as an admin I would expect to be able to change the global setting and still have everything function properly.

 

[Arantor]

The problem is that the global setting still refers to things “as pages”, e.g. page 2, page 4, and you start fighting all sorts of uphill battles about this being cached e.g. by your browser.

The only way that ever works to fix this is to rethink how pagination works, e.g. like in SMF the URL for a board is index.php?board=1.0 - board 1, offset 0 posts (so, page 1), then page 2 can be =1.15 or =1.20 so you capture the page offset.

The approach has plenty of other downsides for being penalised by search engines (irrespective of noindex, no follow and/or canonical directives)