XF 2.1 Newest First?

AtomicZombie

AtomicZombie

Member
My new XF2 install is working great so far, but I just found a show stopper.

Suprising to me, my forums and threads are listed in oldest first order!!
Not sure why anyone would want that, and I really need to fix it.
Tried all the ascending, descending, and date option combos and nothing changes.

The order almost seems random.
Here is an example...

Not a problem, just a question...

Is there any way to display the most recent post FIRST, instead of last (at the bottom) of a thread? (If that makes sense)
atomiczombie.com atomiczombie.com

Members are not going to like it if I cannot fix this.

Thanks,
Brad
 
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My subtle point was, age really doesn't determine if a person likes "change" or not. Age determines when a person is no longer all that impressed with every new bauble, jingtingler or shiny new object.
 
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imno007 said:
Yeah, no disputing that, but somebody has to make the tough decisions, and really, despite all the talk about the wonders of democracy, no one really wants a true democracy, where everyone has equal say. ;)
Click to expand...
True democracy is mob rule. The mob has the say not everyone. Works in rave crowds and in cattle herds but not as a form of stable government.
 
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Manster54 said:
My subtle point was, age really doesn't determine if a person likes "change" or not. Age determines when a person is no longer all that impressed with every new bauble, jingtingler or shiny new object.
Click to expand...
Well, I confess I missed the subtlety because I wasn't aware we were even discussing age. I certainly never mentioned it. I thought we were discussing change in general for all age groups. :)
 
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AtomicZombie said:
Just to continue this thread, my members are continuing to dislike the "oldest first layout", and I am in total agreement.
Please consider this as an upgrade very soon.

ChopZone DIY

The Bike Building DIY Community
www.atomiczombie.com www.atomiczombie.com


Thanks,
Brad
Click to expand...
Not to be argumentative, but I still say it's largely a matter of what people are used to. I see, for example, a user saying, "As a thread grows in length (e.g. Ed'sInferno) would I really want to scroll through hundreds of pages to get to the newer content? I think not." Which is a little ridiculous, because of course you don't have to scroll through hundreds of pages to to get to the newest content, you just have to go to the last page. :)
 
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AtomicZombie said:
Just to continue this thread, my members are continuing to dislike the "oldest first layout", and I am in total agreement.
Please consider this as an upgrade very soon.

ChopZone DIY

The Bike Building DIY Community
www.atomiczombie.com www.atomiczombie.com


Thanks,
Brad
Click to expand...
I note that one person commented:

As a thread grows in length ...would I really want to scroll through hundreds of pages to get to the newer content? I think not.
Click to expand...
Have your members tried the New posts link yet? Also have they tried clicking on an unread thread title (which jumps them directly to the first unread post in that thread? Or click on the date in the right column of the thread list to get to the last post in the thread?

Whilst I understand that change isn't easy, there are these ways to easily access new posts, at least until/if XenForo implement thread ordering.
 
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AtomicZombie said:
Either way, why not have the option?
XF has so many configurable options, which is what makes it shine.
The lack of thread ordering is just plan bizarre.

Brad
Click to expand...
I'm personally not opposed to it being an option, sounds like a good idea to me. I'm just saying saying that here in the West it's a fairly natural kind of layout. I mean, we don't turn to the first page of a book to see the ending, right? Maybe not exactly analogous, but most of us are used to reading sequentially from left to right. But of course it's ultimately up to the XF team, and they probably won't add it unless there's enough demand for it.
 
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imno007 said:
I'm personally not opposed to it being an option, sounds like a good idea to me. I'm just saying saying that here in the West it's a fairly natural kind of layout. I mean, we don't turn to the first page of a book to see the ending, right? Maybe not exactly analogous, but most of us are used to reading sequentially from left to right. But of course it's ultimately up to the XF team, and they probably won't add it unless there's enough demand for it.
Click to expand...

That was exactly my original point, but you see it differently.
Using the book analogy, the current layout is like being presented the beginning page each time you open the book.
I for one, use a book mark, and "continue" where I left off.

Anyhow, I will leave it there.
Having the option (user based) would make XF perfect.
This is the ONLY place where VB scores a point over XF.

Brad
 
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AtomicZombie said:
That was exactly my original point, but you see it differently.
Using the book analogy, the current layout is like being presented the beginning page each time you open the book.
I for one, use a book mark, and "continue" where I left off.

Anyhow, I will leave it there.
Having the option (user based) would make XF perfect.
This is the ONLY place where VB scores a point over XF.

Brad
Click to expand...
Fair enough, I can see your point. Your best bet right now looks to be Xon's addon, although you might have to pay him extra to make it user configurable (and I believe users have to refresh the page to make it work the way you'd want), or the Themehouse addon I previously linked to, which will give you a Reddit like layout. I wouldn't expect to see this any time soon in the core. Never say never, though, I guess.
 
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Having just made the switch from a Forum that has been running since 2002, and now on its third platform, with almost all positive reactions to XF, the single largest complaint is the lack of user preference for viewing order of posts within a thread. This seems particularly problematic after an import where XF has no knowledge of a user's past viewing history. It also is problematic for brand new users without any viewing history. We have active threads going back 15+ years, seriously.

Of note is that this seems to be a very strong personal preference among users, split about 80/20 in our user community between oldest first / newest first. So it was nice that VB gave individual users a choice to set the post viewing order in their individual preferences.

Things such as the New button don't work if the oldest post within a thread is beyond the cutoff date for what defines new.

Given that the display order of posts within a thread is unlikely to change, a button that would take the person to the most recent post in a thread, especially if the posts are paginated, would be very helpful. Otherwise the person needs use the pagination navigation buttons to get to the last page, then scroll all the way down through that page just to find the most recent post. I am noticing that this is particularly non-intuitive to most users given the complaints I am receiving.

Imagine if on Facebook when you first joined a group you had to scroll all the way down to the bottom to see the most recent post, and the newest was always added on the bottom.

I get it that some people don't like change. I too can boot up a DOS 6.2 PC in my lab because I had 30-year customers still deploying them in critical control systems as recently as 2012. I recently scrapped my OS/2 and SCO Linux machines. My job is killing old systems like a huge CICS system that manages 80 million customers and moving them to modern platforms with cloud services and Angular web apps. So it's not like I'm opposed to change. But for me to succeed I need to make sure that I the users are comfortable with the new, and that we haven't introduced any impediments to them working efficiently.
 
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Did you ever find a workable solution without buying an addon? My community is also complaining about 80/20 like you mentioned. We have a much older demographic with accessibility issues, so scrolling through content, especially paginated content, is a real serious problem for a lot of members.
 
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Masetrix said:
There is an solution i think.
Goto /admin.php?forums/yourForumNameHere/edit and select the desired default setting "Default sort order" ...
Click to expand...

Yikes, this would be site-wide and for search engine bots.

I just want to appease the minority by letting those that choose, to sort their forum in the other direction.
 
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I can't for the life of me see why anyone is arguing against what is being asked in the original post.
If you don't want to be able to go directly to the last post, that is your choice but you don't have to have an argument
with someone who does.

I am desperate for this and it seems so simple for one of the developers to add a button so a particular thread will show
the last post instead of the first.
 
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After upgrading to XF2.1 some of my users are requesting this functionality as well. There was an add-on for XF1 that did it but I can't seem to find an add-on for XF2.1.
 
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