[Approved] A [SOLVED] Thread control toggle/flag for the "Help" boards

[tallship]

Here's something nice I learned gaargling about with some forums. Not to beat a Dead horse, but LQ has been around for about 11years or so, and although this particular feature was only added a couple or three years ago, It has worked well... for the most part.

It doesn't hurt if the OP doesn't come back and mark the thread solved, and if the OP does it certainly doesn't mean that posts to that thread are closed either.

But it does tell the forum searcher or binger or googler, "Hey, there's a hit in my search results that says someone solved this issue!"

I don't know if it can be set on a per board basis or not. It wouldn't be much good for the "general discussion forums", since we're talking - not solving help related issues. It may or may not be useful in the tips and tricks/tuts/HowTos board. I haven't really thought about that.

Anyway, when i google a problem, and say, a few LQ posts come up in those results - I'm much more apt to select the one that is prepended with [SOLVED] first.

I hope what I wrote here doesn't try to get parsed as BB Code lol. I'm not sure how to escape out those chars on SMF, other than to perhaps put something inside 'code' tags.

BTW, Lawrence, I've been following the changelogs you've been posting... Great job! Really, a lot of places don't bother to do that and I think changelogs are real important (I'm a hard core Slacker and Slackers learn early on to religiously follow the changelogs there, in fact my mirrorer/iso maker follows the changelog daily in a cronjob, and whenever it changes, I have a brand new Slackware iso image generated).

Anyway, one other thing I wanted to mention. I really like that "going down Mr. Tyler?" link you installed at the top left of each threat now too (and the goto top link at the bottom left of each threads page). it greatly simplifies by freeing me up from scrolling all the way down.

Now to see if there's some way the board can track the last post read and take us directly there, even if it's in the middle of the page. Some boards have that, not sure if SMF has that functionality though.

Kindest regards,

[tallship]

Just to be clear, the proposed feature would be available ONLY to the OP of a thread (Well I suppose it would be available to MODs too).

[Lawrence]

I really like this idea, so I've decided to just apply it without further questions.
- http://www.hostbillforums.com/index.php/board,3.0.html

You can see a Solved topic indicated by a checkmark. The first topic marked as solved being PHP IMAP extension is missing SSL. Checkmarks are not available as topic icons, only available when marking the topic solved.

The following individuals may mark topics as solved.
- Forum Moderators (Any topic in any board)
- Topic Starter (Own topics where they've posted them)

To solve a topic, you would have to go down to the bottom of the topic's page and click on the Solved button. You can also mark topics as Not Solved incase the fix doesn't work for everyone.

And thank you very much for your kind words, it means a lot to me. I don't like leaving people in the dark, and these forums though new, were quickly established. Once that stage was over and activity really picked up, a changelog was necessary so users can see what's been changed.

Also, I like to hear feedback from users regarding new features. Even if it's an issue, the changelog helps keep track of those and they're easily reverted.

Regarding the last post read, I don't think that's available in SMF.

[Lawrence]

Just an FYI, I applied it to the general discussion just for now. I will apply it to other boards as well. The general discussion is just for testing functionality.

[Patrick]

Took me a minute to catch on to what it was being talked about here but it's been a long day.  I like this idea a lot.  A lot of classifieds boards i frequent use this for their "For Sale" adds to mark a thread as "SOLD" obviously same as "Solved".  Again i had to find the solved button but i like it.  I'm going to test it and then i'll delete the thread as i'm curious

[Patrick]

A few things i'm curious as to your thoughts.  Locking the topic on "solved" as well as seeing about "dimming/fade effect" to locked threads as right now they are hard to distinguish.  As you said, Moderator/OP can "mark as solved" which then locks the topic and by default all locked threads would be semi faded to make open threads a little easier on the eyes

[tallship]

No it shouldn't lock the thread - it just marks it as solved. People can still post comments, add to the thread.

It just means that the OP considered it as having reached a solution for herself.

At least that's my understanding of how it works on this board too.

[Lawrence]

At least that's my understanding of how it works on this board too.

Correct, topics solved may be marked as unsolved by a moderator or the op if the issue comes back up again.

[Lawrence]

Alrighty I'll lock this topic now. If you have any further suggestions regarding this, feel free to open up a new thread.