Today, on a whim, I installed a vBulletin plugin called vB Spy that allows you to watch new posts being made as it happens, without having to sit and refresh the New Posts page every five minutes. It even shows snippets of the posts.

 

For your viewing pleasure, here it is:

SFN Spy

Lets see how this works now (two windows open).....

 

wait, nothing happened on my side, strange.

 

No wait, never mind, it seems to only work for other threads. That feature is awesome!

Excellent feature. Can we get this on "quick links" on the top bar?

Look under "New Posts"

Lets see how this works now (two windows open).....

 

wait, nothing happened on my side, strange.

 

No wait, never mind, it seems to only work for other threads. That feature is awesome!

 

Posts in this forum have to be approved before they're visible, hence they don't show up in the Spy instantly.

this thread is under new post, but not the 'iSpy' feature.

Posts in this forum have to be approved, so they won't show up right away.

 

DrDNA, that page (iSpy) updates in real time -- no refresh required.

I like it...

 

But why'd you have to go and TELL people!

DrDNA, that page (iSpy) updates in real time -- no refresh required.

DrDNA was referring to where the link to the Spy is in the toolbar -- under New Posts.

DrDNA was referring to where the link to the Spy is in the toolbar -- under New Posts.

Doh!

I like it!

Except instead of simply reading and/or posting and leaving, I've already found myself waiting in anticipation for something new to pop up............whoops.....there goes another day......

this thread is under new post, but not the 'iSpy' feature.

In the New Posts dropdown menu, not the search page.

 

I like it!

Except instead of simply reading and/or posting and leaving, I've already found myself waiting in anticipation for something new to pop up............whoops.....there goes another day......

Quick, blike, run! They've figured us out!

I like it!

Except instead of simply reading and/or posting and leaving, I've already found myself waiting in anticipation for something new to pop up............whoops.....there goes another day......

I'm finding it quite addicting as well

In the New Posts dropdown menu, not the search page.

 

I'm looking in the New Post drop down menu, and it's not there.

Perhaps I'm using a different SFN style?

Looks like you need to be using "New SFN Style"...

 

We really should get rid of the other styles.

Fixed.

what about that idea that either cap'n or atheist (don't recall) mentioned a while back of making the search results customisable, so you could choose which forums showed up in recent posts/newSpyThingy?

any reason the last 3 at the bottom get increasingly Fuzzy or faded?

any reason the last 3 at the bottom get increasingly Fuzzy or faded?

Because it looks cooler to have them fade out, apparently.

 

what about that idea that either cap'n or atheist (don't recall) mentioned a while back of making the search results customisable, so you could choose which forums showed up in recent posts/newSpyThingy?

There are plugins to tweak New Posts, but none for the Spy. I could do it globally (make nobody see posts from a certain forum) but not easily per-user.

The "get new posts in the last 6/12 hours" options seem to have vanished. The Spy feature doesn't seem to take their place under all circumstances.

It turns out that each of those options actually got the posts in the last day, no matter which increment of time you chose. It was a custom modification to a file that we forgot to re-do when vB was upgraded, I think.

What happened to "New Posts",

"Last 5 Days"?

.....complain, complain, always complaining...........