Zipped thread requests... - by Sluggs
Sluggs on 20/4/2006 at 10:09
Just curious about this one...
Is it possible to request a zipped file of a current thread? I was thinking about my "Get Learning Anim8or" thread. It would be great to have that thread for offline viewing. Can this be done or is there another way of downloading the entire thread, without having to save each page, as there's around 53 of them! 1300 posts!
David on 20/4/2006 at 10:23
No, there is no method to do this via the forum software.
Vigil on 20/4/2006 at 10:46
On a vaguely related note, is the forum currently using gzip output compression? That's pretty trivial to turn on in PHP and would speed up page downloads (and reduce bandwidth). IIRC it has some caching issues in Internet Explorer, however I'm not familiar with what they are and whether they would affect standard forum browsing at all.
David on 20/4/2006 at 10:59
Yes, we are using Gzip and showing around about an 80% saving. We're only using one of the base settings (1 or 2) as the saving at higher levels is not worth the additional processing.
Sluggs on 20/4/2006 at 11:20
Quote Posted by David
No, there is no method to do this via the forum software.
OK David, thanks for your reply.
AxTng1 on 22/4/2006 at 04:22
Quote Posted by David
No, there is no method to do this via the forum software.
Are the posts stored in discrete pages or all in an array which is then compiled into pages when the phps are generated? 'Cause if they are, why not write a script to output all the posts to one (admittedly large) page and offer that for download?
Sorry if this is a stupid question, I've only worked with REALLY basic forum software before.
David on 22/4/2006 at 07:54
The posts are stored in a database. Posts from the previous 10 days or so are held in a separate table pre-parsed - that is they are not held as you posted them, but rather converted to raw HTML to save time when you view a thread.
I do not believe there would be enough of a demand to create an "All thread" view.
Nameless_Voice on 14/5/2006 at 19:34
I always thought the idea of having the threads split into pages was to make sure that viewers see more ads (not necessarily here, more of the original reason why the forum software does this).
There is an option for the number of posts to view per thread, and (presuming that the PHP that generates the thread view just uses some type of counter to know when to stop), it should be possible to allow it to support more than the current maximum fairly easily. It probably isn't worth it though.
Vigil on 14/5/2006 at 20:58
The reason most forum software does this isn't to facilitate more ad exposure, it's to reduce the load on the database server by not requiring it to retrieve hundreds of posts in full each time a long thread is viewed.
