For the past few days the previously reliable functions that show a post as read have not been working for me, either when I read a post or do Mark All Forums Read. In other words, when I go out and come back, the same post show up as unread (both in IE8 and Safari).

Anyone else? Any ideas?

I haven't seen anything similar here on either windows or iOS. Since the 'read' status works across devices, this should seemingly come from a database (?) problem on the server related to you ID. Can any of our more IT-literate members comment on what might cause this?

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Are you definitely logged in when you read the forums and come back? If you read them as a guest you will be a guest when you come back so nothing will stick.

_________________
I'm thinking...

Definitely logged in (permanently so), and it happens both within the same session and if I come out of the browser and go back in. It's happened today as well. It's not an occasional bug. It's become a permanent feature.

I would try making sure that your browser is set to accept cookies from L19. All session information stems from that. Let me know if this makes a difference.

_________________
I'm thinking...

Cookies have always been allowed and I have made no changes in that area. But I turned off the instruction to delete temporary files, even though that was turned on a very long time ago, and that seems to have "solved" the problem. I say "solved" because it's a bit like a lobotomy to cure a headache, but thanks for looking into it.

Edit: No, I've just discovered that didn't work!

Have you tried …

• logging out,
• closing all open L19 tabs or windows (this may be omitted, I think, but am not sure),
• deleting all L19 cookies, and …
• logging in again?

Maybe this helps …


Regards, Tom

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

I would definitely try this. I have tested your account permissions and have no problems with the feature indicating the issue may be client side. Do you remember about when the issue started? I can check logs to see if any changes were made around that time.

_________________
I'm thinking...

I have tried logging out and back in. I don't know how to delete L19-only cookies, but the reclogging appeared to work yesterday.

However, today the problem is back. Imagine I get a list of ten posts unread. I read two. For the rest I click on "Mark all forums read". The program does some business and come back with a screen of "unread posts" which is (as desired) empty.

I leave L19 and come back in a little later, only to find that the ten posts that were listed before are now listed again (but previously read posts from yesterday are not being listed). And ditto if I try a third time.

The only thing I can think of as being possibly unusual in what I do is that I set View Unread Posts as my home page on the Windows desktop. On the Apple machines I don't do that and seem to avoid the problem.

I will try resetting the home page to the main forum page, but it still seems like a bug to me.

If I knew which browser you’re using I might be able to tell you how to delete select cookies, but …

http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser's-Cookies
http://www.pcworld.com/article/242939/how_to_delete_cookies.html
http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/clear-cookies-installed.html
http://www.aboutcookies.org/DEFAULT.ASPX?page=2
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/delete-cookies-remove-info-websites-stored (Specifically for Mozilla Firefox)
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647?hl=en (ditto for Google Chrome)
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/delete-manage-cookies#ie=ie-11 (ditto for Internet Exploiter Explorer)
(all these found by googling for “delete cookies”)

Every browser should give you the choice to find and select cookies per domain name/Web site and delete only these.

If this doesn’t help then it might be a good idea to delete the browser cache. I can find according help pages for you in 30 seconds if necessary

Cordially, Tom

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

John, if it makes you feel any better, I have been having the same problem, for about the same length of time. I came to this forum tonight to see if anyone else had reported the issue.

Since you're seeing the same thing, I'm going to assume that you are using Internet Explorer. I'm using IE 11, myself. Here's how to find and delete just the 19x19 cookie:

1. Open Tools menu (sprocket icon) and choose Internet Options.
2. Under the Browsing History section choose Settings, then choose View Files button.
3. In the Explorer window that comes up, click on the header of the name column (if the files aren't already in alphabetical order), and then scroll down to the files whose names start with "cookie:". Find any that refer to the 19x19 site, and delete them.
4. If you are using the InPrivate feature of IE, then there won't be any cookies for the site, and thus no history of what posts you read. But I doubt that is your problem, because I'm not doing that, and I have the same problem you do.

P.S. Looking in there, I see no cookies for 19x19, but there are cookies for *lots* of other sites. This probably explains why I get no history. I will try to figure out why no cookie for 19x19.

[Later] Now I recall that IE11 has taken a hard line on tracking cookies (which is a correct choice, I think), but which is hissing off a lot of advertisers. So, you may have to override the defaults to get your "read" status to stick. Here's how to do it:

1. Open Tools menu (sprocket icon) and choose Internet options.
2. Choose Privacy tab at the top.
3. Click the Sites button.
4. In the new dialog, enter the URL of the 19x19 home page (http://www.lifein19x19.com), then click the Allow button, and OK out of all dialogs.

Doing this seems to have restored my ability to remember which posts I have read (even though I *still* don't see a 19x19 cookie when I follow the first set of instructions above. I guess it will take until tomorrow to figure out whether those statuses are truly going to be remembered for all time.

FWIW, IE11 also sends "do not track" notices to all sites by default. If the 19x19 site honors those requests, then maybe that explains why our history isn't being stored. I don't think you can disable "do not track" on a site-by-site basis, however, and I don't feel like disabling it globally. That setting is a checkbox in a large list on the Advanced tab of the Internet Options dialog.

HTH

Thanks, but my problem has apparently been resolved. Unless it was logging out (without deleting cookies) that resolved it, I have no idea what did the trick, which was why I didn't report the "solution". That, plus the fact that I did still have problems for a short while even after logging back in, plus a couple of new but temporary ones. Maybe the CIA just stopped listening in.

Nope, problem not solved. I just came back after a day or so, and *nothing* is marked as read, even though it had worked for a while.

All my cookie settings are basically "wide open", and I have added this site as one that is allowed to have tracking cookies.

<sigh>

I'll report back, if I figure it out.

I think the suggestion was to clear them and your browser cache so there is no false data there.

Also do you write www.lifein19x19.com or lifein19x19.com, I do know some other phpBB forums that have problems like this based on how it handles the difference between thoose two.

(This might well be nothing)

Well, the problem doesn't appear to replicate in Google Chrome, just IE 11. I don't feel like switching to Chrome just to fix this problem, nor do I feel like clearing ALL my cookies right now. I have taken steps, using the F12 debugging features in IE, to clear just the 19x19 cookie, and have restarted, etc, etc, but it seems not to fix the issue. I'll keep plugging, in my very miniscule free time.

The goal here is to document a series of steps that "just works" to fix the problem. We're not there yet.

Because the mods said so, I'm going on faith that the solution involved cookies, somehow.

So IE 11 apparently has some well known cookie problems. It is suggested to try to override the automatic cookie handling option. (this can be done by going to Internet options>privacy>advanced>override automatic cookie handling). If this doesn't work it may be an issue with current bugs in IE11.

Other notes of interest about IE11 cookies:
-cookies are turned off by default (need to be on for L19 functions lik emark forums read to work properly)
-there is a bug that loses cookie information (link to microsoft connect bug ID 810700)
-refreshing the page changes your session ID (link to microsoft connect bug ID 809923) [supposedly this bug is connected to the previous one but you never know for sure until at least one of them is actually worked out]

_________________
I'm thinking...

Yep, I have already overridden automatic cookie handling, and said "accept all" in both cases. No real difference. I still haven't gotten any time to really dig into this further.

Thanks for the pointers. However, if the bugs that you link to are as stated, it's interesting that they aren't yet fixed.

Anyway, Chrome continues to have no issues.

Finally solved!

It took a while, but I finally figured out a solution to this, for IE 10 and 11 users. The bottom line is that cookies are no longer stored as individual files. Plus, all the changes that I made above (using the Internet Options dialog, and even the F12 debugging options) do NOT appear to get rid of cookies, or enable tracking cookies the way you might expect.

Anyway, the solution is found in a file called WebCacheV01.dat, which is found at C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WebCache, where you replace <username> with your user name. This is a data base file that MSFT uses to store lots of downloaded stuff, including cookies. It is used for more then IE, which means that it is almost always in use. You won't be able to just go to that folder and delete it. If you do delete it, you lose all your cookies and saved login information, but that's what I wound up doing.

The trick to deleting (or renaming) this file is to reboot your machine and *immediately* navigate to that folder and rename/delete the file, without opening any other programs. The file will immediately be recreated by the OS, and your 19x19 "all read" problems will be solved.

You may have some programs that run at startup that open the WebCacheV01.dat file, in which case you'll have a hard time renaming/deleting it even after a reboot. If so, you may have to terminate the offending programs with Task Manager before you can get rid of the file. If all else fails, search the Internet for WebCacheV01.dat, for more ideas.

Well, the problem came back, in a few days. It wasn't important enough at the time to trigger a switch to Google Chrome, but I have finally switched for other reasons (IE seems to have gotten distinctly buggy and slow in the last year, enough so that it is finally worth the minor pain of switching in order to get better performance).

We'll see if that fixes the "all read" issue, but I expect that it will.

[Update] Never mind, I've found it! In any list of Posts, if you click on the little icon in front of the thread title (with the tiny arrow pointing at a document), it will take you to the first unread post in that thread. Hovering over that little icon gives you a tooltip of something like "View first unread post". So the feature *does* exist. Am I the only one who hadn't found it?

[Original Text]

So, there is still an issue, but it's not important enough for a new thread.

Now that I've finally switched to Chrome, threads are marked "read" after I open them. However, when there are new posts on one of my "read" threads, it doesn't change back to "unread" status. It seems to me that GoDiscussions.com worked differently... when new posts were made to a "read" thread, there was a way to easily go back and read *only* those new posts. That is, the "read" status remembered not only the thread, but the post within the thread, where you had previously finished reading.

Am I misremembering?

Is there a way to get similar functionality with our current software?