Feature request: Hide all posts from subforum
 

It would be nice to have the ability to hide all posts from certain forums/sub-forums. For instance, I use the New Posts function a lot. Fully half of the posts that show up there are from the Delta TA forum. It would be nice to be able to specify that no posts from such-and-such sub/forums show up unless you specifically navigate to said sub/forum.

It isn't possible to customize the New Posts feature in an officially sanctioned manner (I believe a third party hack might do this, but our tech team is unwilling to install it for various reasons).

However, one can customize the display of forums one subscribes to. So instead of filtering out forums, you are seeing only forums you subscribe to. You would view that list in your User CP. See below for instructions.

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How To View Only Those Forums You're Interested In

Subscribe to those Forums you're interested in by clicking on the Forums Tools link and choose the notify in CP (control panel) option. Then when you visit the site, go to your Settings. There you will see only those forums you have subscribed to. Forums with new content will be indicated by the standard iconography. There will also be a section of New Posts in Subscribed Forums.

Then in each forum you've subscribe to, change the Thread Display Options to Sort Thread By Last Post Time to ensure the newest threads appear at the top.

Set a link in your browser to your Settings page and you now have any easy way

... unless one knows how to do it.



Each of the forums and subforums is numbered, and you can select which forums are included or excluded from your New Posts search if you know the number and how to format the request.

1 - ??
2 - Major
3 - Regional
4 - Cargo
5 - Fractional
6 - Corporate
7 - ??
8 - Hiring News
9 thru 20 - ?
21 - Invalid, or Not Accessible to (Non-Moderator) Registered Users
22 thru 29 - ?
30, 31 - Invalid, or ...
32 - ??
33 thru 37 - Invalid ...
38 - Military
39 - ??
40 - Flight Schools and Training
41, 42 - ??
43, 44 - Invalid ...
45 - ??
46, 47 - Invalid
48 - Part 135
49 - Your Photos and Videos
50 - Foreign
51, 52 - Invalid ...
53 - ??
54 thru 57 - Invalid ...
58 - Technical
59 - ??
60, 61 - ??
62 - The Boneyard
63, 64 - ??
65 - Domestic
66 thru 69 - ??
70, 71 - Invalid ...
72, 73 - ??
74 - Invalid
75 - ??
76 - Career Questions
77 - Leaving the Career
78 - Aviation Law
79 - ??
80 thru 84 - Invalid ...
85, 86 - ??
87 - Invalid ...
88, 89, 90 - ??
91 - Part 91 and Low Time
92 - CAL/UAL Merger
93 - Safety
94 thru 96 - ??
97 - Charter
98 - Invalid ...
99, 100 - ??
101 - Site-related problems & requests
102 - Southwest/Airtran Merger
103 - AMR Bankruptcy
104 - Hangar Talk
105 - ??
106 - Delta TA Discussion
107 - Invalid

I harvested the above information using a Search for New Posts specifying a single Forum by number, and seeing what popped up. If there were no New Posts for that particular forum, I would get the "No New Threads" message, so I couldn't tell which forum it was. A new post in that particular forum could reveal which one I was looking at and fill in one of the question marks in the list.

This is the search I used:


[URL]http://airlinepilotforums.com/search.php?do=getnew&include=XX;contenttype=vBForum_Post[/URL]

Notice the part which says, "include=XX". That's where you can choose which Forums you want to search. For example, if you only want to search for New Posts in the Regional forum, you would set that to "include=3". If you want to search Regional, Fractional, and Corporate, use commas to separate the Forums: "include=3,5,6"

The suggestion given to the Original Poster to Subscribe to all the Forums he wants to follow, and then Use the Settings page to perform his search is quite labor intensive and cumbersome. In order to exclude a single forum, he has to mark every other forum.

Using the above search method and the word "exclude" instead of "include", he can accomplish what he wants with far less work. Specifically, he wants to exclude Delta TA Discussion forum, or Forum 106. The following search does exactly that:

[URL]http://airlinepilotforums.com/search.php?do=getnew&exclude=106;contenttype=vBForum_Post[/URL]

If he wants to also exclude the CAL/UAL Merger forum, this should work:

[URL]http://airlinepilotforums.com/search.php?do=getnew&exclude=92,106;contenttype=vB Forum_Post[/URL]


Now, is it possible to give the User that option via a button on the Menu Bar or a Drop-Down Menu item? Absolutely, and it doesn't take a hack. The problem is, every member might want a different "filter" to look at different topics, and the number of buttons required to make everyone happy would also make everyone unhappy about the number of buttons.

But if a sufficient number of people wanted a convenient search filter, it might be something worth considering. Until then, I suggest the Original Poster bookmark one of the links above, or create a custom search to include or exclude the forums of his choice, and use that to quickly filter the forum search to his own taste.






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Tony, I need a strong drink and a bottle of aspirin! ;)

Selectively hiding posts would be the antithesis of being a moderator. As a moderator, I unfortunately have to read as many posts as I can to catch all the baddies who want to do bad things, or the bored sitting in a layover hotel in EWR. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. :)

Wow, Tony... I wish we could "like" posts on this forum. That is most excellent. I will try to put that into practice a little later today and make it a browser favorite. Thanks for the help.

That's why we became pilots. :D

Great post Tony, thanks! As you point out, the problem is trying to anticipate the combination forums and exclude/include options to keep everyone happy. Forum subscriptions can work for specific forums, but your exclude solution is also very helpful for a "new posts" filter.

What I would suggest, with your permission, is to make this post into a FAQ, then users can roll their own filters and save them as a browser bookmark. It is worth mentioning that users will want to save the query and not the resulting search ID to their bookmark links.

It would be even more useful if you could help fill in the blanks (the question marks) I left with my crude method of harvesting the numbers associated with each forum.

Your point about bookmarking the query and not the search ID bears repeating. Perhaps it would be beneficial to give an example of the resulting URL with Search ID to show what not to bookmark.



Feel free to use whatever portions of my post you wish. Per the Intellectual Property clause of the "Terms and Conditions of Use", I granted nonexclusive global rights to adapt and publish when I posted. I won't be offended so long as it's put to use for the benefit of pilots. :)



I'm not as brilliant as the post might suggest. I have to give credit for this bit of knowledge to the Co-Founder of another pilot website powered by vBulletin, the original "Pilots helping Pilots" site. He used this method to power three "New Posts" buttons. One button searches for only new posts which are "Aviation Related." Another button excludes any new posts in the Politics sections. A third searches for all new posts on the site. Those three buttons seem to satisfy most users, and the method described above to customize a search and save it to a bookmark works for everyone else. Constructing the custom search there is a little easier because the forum number is part of the forum's URL (which appears in status bar when you hover your mouse over the forum titles). If you could provide a complete list of the forums and their associated numbers, that would be helpful.







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I'll get to work on a tutorial for this technique after I inventory the active forums list. Did you happen to learn this from the infamous UAL78?

He's a wise man, and a great guy to hang out with in Naritaville.

But I got this tidbit from his partner, the Famous Falcon Capt. ;)





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