About Posts Not Being Marked As Read!

jdl · Post by **jdl** » Tue Jul 12, 2016 8:09 pm

I've decided to look into this issue today, and I'm pretty sure I've figured out why this is happening.

For those of you who use Chrome or Firefox, if you have your settings set to "Continue where you left off" (Chrome) or "Show my windows and tabs from last time" (Firefox), then you will most likely encounter this problem if you do not clear cookies very often. The problem occurs when one of the cookies for the forum called "phpbb2mysql_t" gets filled to its limit with information about which posts to mark as read. You see, when you have Firefox or Chrome set to the option above, this cookie does not get deleted when you close your browser like its supposed to be. Instead, it stays, and gets filled up to the browser cookie size limit (about 4kb), where it cannot store any further information.

Now, I'm not sure what we can do about this other than setting your browser to something other than the option listed above or deleting this specific cookie from time to time. If anyone can find an extension for Firefox or Chrome that allows you to select specific cookies to be deleted on browser exit, please let us know!

EDIT: There's a bit more to this. If you're running Google Chrome and do NOT have the startup option set to "Continue where you left off", try unchecking "Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed" under the advanced settings if you're still having issues with posts being unread.

LittleZbot · Post by **LittleZbot** » Tue Jul 12, 2016 10:03 pm

This used to happen constantly for me, but I discovered it was because I was using the "Back" button. Using links to the forum section at the top of the screen solved the problem.

jdl · Post by **jdl** » Tue Jul 12, 2016 10:51 pm

Yes, that can happen as well. The back button sometimes doesn't reload the page you're going back to, but instead uses a cached version of it.

tyteen4a03 · Post by **tyteen4a03** » Wed Jul 13, 2016 5:11 am

For Chrome, try Cookie Manager.

cloudrac3r · Post by **cloudrac3r** » Wed Jul 13, 2016 9:00 am

After pressing the back button, you can just hit the refresh button at the top to see the read posts.
I have Tab for a Cause as my home page, I don't show the old tabs.
I'm on Firefox, and I have "Cookies Manager+" installed for development reasons - nothing to do with this. It might do what you want it to, but I'm not sure.
There are "Mark all topics as read" buttons at the top of the index page, and all of the forums.

DerpzSpycrab · Post by **DerpzSpycrab** » Wed Jul 13, 2016 3:58 pm

Meanwhile, I'm getting the opposite problem where it marks everything as read and I don't know what I still need to read.

jdl · Post by **jdl** » Wed Jul 13, 2016 4:27 pm

DerpzSpycrab wrote:Meanwhile, I'm getting the opposite problem where it marks everything as read and I don't know what I still need to read.

I may be able to try and figure this out too. What browser are you using, and do you have any addons or extensions that affect cookies? Also, have you used the "mark all forums as read" or "mark all topics as read" buttons before this started happening? Right now the only thing I can suggest is to clear all of your cookies for pcpuzzle.com and to not use those two buttons I mentioned.

DerpzSpycrab · Post by **DerpzSpycrab** » Sat Jul 16, 2016 4:24 pm

Never used either of those buttons, but I'll try clearing my cookies to see if that fixes anything.

The problem might be that it shows me as logged in on the online list, but I still have to log in to do anything.

jdl · Post by **jdl** » Sat Jul 16, 2016 11:36 pm

DerpzSpycrab wrote:Never used either of those buttons, but I'll try clearing my cookies to see if that fixes anything.

The problem might be that it shows me as logged in on the online list, but I still have to log in to do anything.

Wait.. So the forum is showing you in the "who's online" list whenever you aren't even logged in?

I don't know why it would do that, but I do know that being logged out would explain why everything is appearing as already read for you, because I don't think the forum will show anything as unread as long as you aren't logged in. So this is probably just your cookies or browser being seriously bugged out, or maybe someone else is using your account?