Posts per page

[Christopher Robin]

Is there a setting to crank up the number of posts per page? It's at 25 now but my Art

thread back on Live quickly got into the hundreds of pages and it would take

forever to go through at 25 posts per page... 100 or more would be better.

[Apparition]

No.  Most modern forum software (including Invision Community Suite), do not allow a custom posts per page setting, unfortunately.

Edited August 2, 2019 by Apparition

[Christopher Robin]

Thanks Apparition, you're saying this is by design? Is this definitive?

Seems an unusual thing to remove... was browsing faster and more conveniently an issue somehow?

[Christopher Robin]

So I checked with the company and this was their reply

 

" If you needed to increase the number of posts per page then we have a directory of 3rd party developers available for hire at https://invisioncommunity.com/third-party/providers/. It would be a very simple plugin to make this change. "

 

Absolutely blows my mind that this is not a standard feature.

[Christopher Robin]

Sooo... plugin anyone?

[Apparition]

On ‎8‎/‎3‎/‎2019 at 10:52 AM, Christopher Robin said:

Thanks Apparition, you're saying this is by design? Is this definitive?

Seems an unusual thing to remove... was browsing faster and more conveniently an issue somehow?

 

As you came across, yep, it is by design and definitive.  As I said, most modern forums are like this now, for better or for worse.  Web developers want to streamline things with few or no user options in order to "simplify" things so that websites display the same on desktop, notebook, or mobile device.

[GM Capocollo]

It also makes linking to specific pages or posts more consistent, and helps with search-engine optimization.

[Christopher Robin]

I trust that you both have more expertise here so forgive my ignorance on this subject but how would me setting my browser to show 100 posts per page affect anyone else's display on a tablet or a mobile device or for that matter the sites overall SEO rankings on Google or Bing? If their display works better with 25 posts they can leave it at 25. My changes should only affect me unless just having the option is a detriment somehow which doesn't seem logical to me.

 

Also if anything phones and tablets load much slower than my fast PC it would seem to me the fewer times you have to hit "next page" the less time you wait for pages to load, the less laborious and the quicker you could get through a lengthy thread.

 

Finally a search of just "City of..." triggers Google to load "City of Heroes Homecoming" as the first auto-fill option.

A handful of different searches brought me here within 3 clicks as well. We seem to be doing well in the rankings from my admittedly limited tests.

[Zepp]

If you click the timestamp for a specific post, it links to that post. This allows you to link to a specific post without using pages. I try to avoid referring to pages as those numbers are subject to change. However, some people make references such as "this thread is now 14 pages long" or "if you look at page three of the thread" in their comments rather than linking to a specific post or specifying the number of responses. On forums that are reasonable (allow user preferences) these comments do not always make sense. Which is why I have followed best practices of linking directly to a specific post for a long time now...

 

Would I like the ability to set the forum to 100 posts per page. Yes, it would save me loads of time. Is it a top priority for me? No.

[Christopher Robin]

Agreed Zepp, this is not the most critical of things (as an artist over in the art forums the proper displaying

of hosted images was way more important) it would just be a huge time saver and frustration avoider.

 

I too link to specific post (it's just the way I have always done it) but not a day goes by when I don't bump into the 25 post limit

and think" well that's dumb, who set it at 25? Let me just go into the settings quick and change it to something more reasonab... oh, right. I can't." 😞

[Christopher Robin]

On 8/25/2019 at 1:11 AM, Zepp said:

.............. On forums that are reasonable (allow user preferences) these comments do not always make sense.........................

Would I like the ability to set the forum to 100 posts per page. Yes,....................................

@Zepp on the note of more specific replies I wanted to rebut this first point you make. "These comments do not always make sense" strikes me as a nonsensical reason to not want this option added as it would ONLY ever affect the people who voluntarily change their page count to something more reasonable like 100 and even then only if they are incapable of dividing by 4.

 

If I have my pages at 100 ppp (posts per page) and I know the default is 25ppp and someone says

look at page 13 then the additional ½ second it takes me to go "oh they mean page 3 and

a little less than ¼ of the way down the page" requires no extra effort for me.

 

If the mental math was really that tough or it was still confusing for some reason and I absolutely had to know

I could hop into the settings, set to 25ppp, go to page 13 find it and then go back to the tab with settings

and set back to 100ppp but that would be an extreme case and again only if I chose to be at 100ppp.

 

If they are also at 100ppp then it is a page for page match and if they are at 200 well then it is all one page.

Either way, despite what you say, it makes perfect sense if you can do simple division in your head and like you

say direct linking to the exact post (as I always do) makes all of it a moot point.

 

Finally once again my setting up to 100ppp does not/will not confuse anyone else as to what "page 13"

means because they are still on the 25ppp default unless, like me, they too chose to modify it.

 

And yeah I still want this.

 

I am almost willing to ask one of their 3rd party devs what it would cost and pay for it myself if I knew

the people here at Homecoming would implement it (yes I just ran into the page barrier again

for the umpteenth bazillion time and AGAIN went to change it before realizing I still cannot

for some strange reason. I still HAVE to be stuck at 25ppp. sigh).

Edited October 18, 2019 by Christopher Robin

[MetaVileTerror]

and really, having replies numbered in threads just makes sense too.  You don't have to say "go to page whatever," you say "it's post number X."  I'm shocked that this message board system doesn't have such standard elements baked in to it.

 

But yeah; what's the word on getting some quality of life improvements on user-defined posts-per-page?

[Zepp]

12 hours ago, Christopher Robin said:

on the note of more specific replies I wanted to rebut this first point you make. "These comments do not always make sense" strikes me as a nonsensical reason to not want this option added as it would ONLY ever affect the people who voluntarily change their page count to something more reasonable like 100 and even then only if they are incapable of dividing by 4. 

First, I would like to specify that I do support this proposal. I was just referring to the use of best practices (linking to a specific post), and that it would me more needed if there were options for changing posts per page. Personally, I would probably go 1k ppp if I had the choice. I also agree that a post-count (this is post #xxx of this thread) would be useful.

[Alty]

Having used/admin an IPB (Invision Power Board) forum for over a decade, it was possible to choose the number of posts per page and posts had numbers. 

 

But that was before various improvements. Some things are eliminated to keep a software updated, consistent and modern. 

Edited October 28, 2019 by Alty

[Zaquria]

On 8/20/2019 at 9:47 PM, Apparition said:

 

As you came across, yep, it is by design and definitive.  As I said, most modern forums are like this now, for better or for worse.  Web developers want to streamline things with few or no user options in order to "simplify" things so that websites display the same on desktop, notebook, or mobile device.

Not sure where you have got your information, but IPS Forum has the ability to change the amount of posts and topics per page.

 

It is under the Forums Setting as Topic Settings, Posts per page and Topics per page.

 

 

[Zaquria]

On 10/28/2019 at 11:14 AM, Alty said:

Having used/admin an IPB (Invision Power Board) forum for over a decade, it was possible to choose the number of posts per page and posts had numbers. 

 

But that was before various improvements. Some things are eliminated to keep a software updated, consistent and modern. 

There is a plug-in which will add the the post number count back within the post.

[Alty]

On 11/6/2019 at 12:05 PM, Zaquria said:

Not sure where you have got your information, but IPS Forum has the ability to change the amount of posts and topics per page.

 

It is under the Forums Setting as Topic Settings, Posts per page and Topics per page.

 

 

That setting would apply to the entire forum. In older versions of IPS/IPB members could select how many topics to view. Which is what the OP wanted.