"Last visited" time

[Tom Veatch]

How does the subject time get updated?

Right now, for example the current time (CST) is 1424 (2:24pm) and the "You last visited:" time in the forum header is showing 9:43 AM. However, I've visited the forum at least twice between 9:43 and the current time.

What gives?

[Keith Outten]

Tom,

Go to your user cp and select the edit options link. You may have your local time zone wrong for your area.

The actual time when posts are made here is based on our servers clock in EST. Right now our clock is within a few minutes of the actual time based on a local time server Aaron has configured our server to sync with.

.

[Tom Veatch]

Tom,

Go to your user cp and select the edit options link. You may have your local time zone wrong for your area.
...
.

Thanks for the reply, Keith. The time setting in the options is correct and the times that show on my posts agree with the local time setting on my computer (DST, GMT - 6) so I believe that all is synchronized correctly.

What I'm noticing is that when I visit the forum the "You last visited" time will show some particular time. If I leave and return at some later time, the last visit time displays the same time as it did the previous visit. For example (ficticious times for illustration purposes):

Enter the forum at 3:00pm, Last visit shows 9:00am, leave the forum at 3:15pm. Return at 4:00pm, Last visit still shows 9:00am even though I visited at 3:00pm.

This is no big deal and I only noticed it because my desktop shortcut to the creek is a forum search for "new posts" (...search.php?do=getnew&include=...) and returns some threads which contain only posts that I've already read. I assume the "You Last Visited" time is the cutoff time for the "getnew" switch in the search string and that's the reason for the original question.

[Jim Becker]

One other thing...if you stay active for some period of time, your "last visited" may appear to be earlier. There is approximately a 30-40 minute window that if you re-access the site, it will still appear as the same access as the previous including what appears as "new".

[Tom Veatch]

Thanks, Jim. That probably explains it. I check back fairly frequently when I'm inside and on the computer so I'm probably fall within that window frequently.

[Jim Becker]

Same here, Tom...I catch up in between a lot of things going on and that can mean one very long "session" relative to when SMC thinks I became active.