I noticed something interesting when I visit the Chronicles of George forums. If I browse the boards at home and then look at them later at work, the board remembers what I have seen (i.e., no star next to messages I read at home), even though I'm looking at it from a different computer.

It's probably not completely cookies -- must be something server side, though damned if I know what. But it's pretty cool and very convenient.

The whole little Avatar thing is cool too, especially since it wouldn't suck up your bandwidth.

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...Trot and Cap'n Bill were free from anxiety and care. Button-Bright never worried about anything. The Scarecrow, not being able to sleep, looked out of the window and tried to count the stars.

That's phpBB which I'm running on In4mador and Brad Sucks. It's pretty cool though there are often exploits.

I think what it's doing for the tracking is just saving the time of your last page load and referring to that. In Stripcreator's forums I rely on the cookie, which is why it's tied to the machine you're on rather than the account.

My way's a little less resource intensive for the server, but their way is definitely more convenient for the user. I'm trying to think of a way to tie the new "who's online" system (which tracks pretty much the same data, I think) to a new new post tracking system.

As for the avatars I haven't really played with them much. How do they work?

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www.bradsucks.net

Remember kids, say no to avatars. (avatar = small picture of whatever under a user's name)

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Batman created by Bob Kane

Kind of like the image link... link to an image on some other site.

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...Trot and Cap'n Bill were free from anxiety and care. Button-Bright never worried about anything. The Scarecrow, not being able to sleep, looked out of the window and tried to count the stars.