Can messages be numbered?

[Christophe_O]

Hello. Is there an administration setting such that every vBulletin message receives a VISIBLE number?

At Delphiforums.com --every message is numbered clearly. Thread 1281.0 starts with msg 1281.1, then "12811.2 in reply to 1281.1," etc.

In a YaBB forum, every messages also is numbered clearly: "reply 1, " "reply 2," "reply 3," etc.

Of course, when you "reply" to a message in vBulletin---you see in your address bar that there is unique message number---but it is long and complex. You can not see immediately, "This is the 12th message in this discussion....this is the 20th...." etc.

Usually this is not significant---but in advertising or trading forums, such as I hope to build, it can be very, very helpful to have a clear and visible message number to which to refer.

Can this be done readily with vBulletin?

[Jake Bunce]

the "long and complex" number you are talking about is the sessionhash, that is not the right number. each thread has a unique threadid number. each post has a unique postid number. these numbers are in the urls.

[Arkham]

Originally posted by Jakeman
the "long and complex" number you are talking about is the sessionhash, that is not the right number. each thread has a unique threadid number. each post has a unique postid number. these numbers are in the urls.

I'm also interested in this as another example of something that can be taken from the original BBSes and used today. It'd be a great way to clarify things, esp. in conjunction with "threaded" threads.

Would there be a way to edit the templates to include this number in each post? From what little I know it would seem possible...

Am I right in assuming all posts are counted together, so there are no repeated numbers? I.E. 2 forums can't each have posts 1-50, rather their numbers would be 1-100...

It'd be great to have forum-independant numbering... Maybe a really vicious hack could incorporate a proprietary ThreadId.PostID format, but I guess that'll have to be dealt with on vbulletin.org.

Interesting.

[Freddie Bingham]

Posts are given positional numbers in vb3 threads.

[Arkham]

Originally posted by freddie
Posts are given positional numbers in vb3 threads.

That's it, that's all, that's great. Thanks for the info.


I was just hoping for an underlying framework that could be hacked if necessary in order to "see-replies" or "see-original" (reply tracing) from any given message. I figured the numbering structure would help, if this functionality wasn't already available.

[Freddie Bingham]

Originally posted by Arkham


That's it, that's all, that's great. Thanks for the info.


I was just hoping for an underlying framework that could be hacked if necessary in order to "see-replies" or "see-original" (reply tracing) from any given message. I figured the numbering structure would help, if this functionality wasn't already available. I was just responding to the first poster, sorry I did not intend to slight your query. One could replace this 'positional' number which just says this is post 3 in this thread, with the actual postid of the post which is unique.

[Arkham]

Originally posted by freddie
I was just responding to the first poster, sorry I did not intend to slight your query. One could replace this 'positional' number which just says this is post 3 in this thread, with the actual postid of the post which is unique.

Huh? No, I was genuinely thanking you! :) The repetition was because you succinctly and single-handedly resolved what I was wondering.

Thanks again!

(The detailed example was just to let you see the pebbles rolling around in my brain. Until I get my hands on vB, my design plans are pretty ethereal... ;) )

Cheers!