I just found that this does not work, and I think I have an idea why.
I am on a trip, and didn't log in for several days. And I am using a different computer now. When I am at home and on my normal computer, I always seem to get the right data, i.e. I can see recent posts and replies and so on. It might not be perfect but it works, generally.
When I logged in just now, it did not give me any of this data, and I think the reason is that there is no cookie to read. So rather than doing some sort of internal check regarding last login, it just looks for the cookie, if no cookie, then no data. Maybe this is commonly how it is supposed to work, but anyway that's what it looks like. So for those who are not getting the data properly, its probably that the cookie has been expunged and can't be found.
Not sure if useful, but as this function always worked (or seemed to work) fine for me, I def noticed today when it didn't.
It can also happen if you visit with a different browser.
That said, I always use the same browser and the same computer and I still see the problem occasionally. I think it may happen when somebody does some work on the MODX site.
BobRay, ignoring for now any bugs, do you think the function of "merely" using cookies to provide this data is common these days, or is it a bit behind the times? I don't really know, just curious what you think.
It seems to me, based on absolutely nothing tbh, that only using cookies is a bit simple. I only say that because I know the system logs the users' last time online, and it could work off of that to determine some or all of these data sets.
I don't have a point or goal here to be honest, only wondering. It is notable that paulp feels that the lack of good data causes him to be less active. It is an interesting aspect of community-building.
I honestly don't know about the use of cookies in other systems. I've never looked at the Discuss code to see if it actually uses cookies for this or not.
I do know that this just happened to me again. I have not cleared any cookies, but I had to log in again. The "no unread replies" link is showing, but if I click on it, I see three new replies.
It also shows "no new posts" and if I click on that, I see nothing (not even the three new replies) even though there are a number of other posts I have not read. This happens to me several times per week and it is pretty annoying. I'm sure there are others who are less active in the Forums because of this.
