The discussion revolves around the global tracking selection feature in a forum, specifically regarding the ability to track all topics across the entire forum, not just within specific categories. heinrich5991 explains that while individual topics and read topics can be tracked, there’s no option to track all topics at the top-level category. lake54 seeks clarification on the purpose of this feature, possibly for notifications. heinrich5991 clarifies that the goal is to automatically track all new topics, not just those entered by the user. codinghorror notes that while there is a setting to track topics a user enters, there’s no option to track all newly created topics, which seems to be a point of confusion. Dannii mentions that users migrating from phpBB are unhappy with the change in unread post behavior, and there’s no way to track everything. codinghorror adds that the red “last visit” line, which automatically indicates new content, is a feature present in most topic lists.
Currently there’s a tracking selection for each topic on its own and for read topics.
Then there’s a tracking selection for each category – but unfortunately not for the “top-level” category of the forum, that means that I either have to track all categories (and hope no new categories get added) or set read topic tracking to always and manually click on each topic to track it.
Add a tracking selector to the top-level “Categories” view which affects all new topics.
I’m unsure what you mean, is this to get a notification of new categories that have been created?
No, this is about automatically tracking or watching new topics in general, regardless in which category they are.
If you want to watch all topics you enter, there is a setting for that.
But watching all topics that are created, no, there is no setting for that. You’d need to watch every category. That seems reasonable as long as the # of categories is not too large.
We’ve just migrated from phpBB, and a few of our users are somewhat upset that the unread page behaves differently. Just checking that there’s still no way to track everything short of adding all the categories to the tracking list (about 30 in our case.)
Also, I’m not sure even that will do it. Does the unread page show topics from a tracked category that you’ve never entered? From my tests I don’t think it does.
