What on earth is the difference between a "Topic" and a "Message" ?

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

I have installed Jforum, created a couple of dummy accounts, and made & made a test post from each account.

ie. there are 2 posts in total to a test forum.

However, when I look at the Forum Index, it shows "1 Topic & 1 Message" for the forum.

What's the difference between a 'topic' and a 'message' in this sense ???

Thank you.


[originally posted on jforum.net by heatherfraser]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

heatherfraser wrote:I have installed Jforum, created a couple of dummy accounts, and made & made a test post from each account.

ie. there are 2 posts in total to a test forum.

However, when I look at the Forum Index, it shows "1 Topic & 1 Message" for the forum.

What's the difference between a 'topic' and a 'message' in this sense ???

Thank you.

A "topic" is a top-level post in a forum. When you click into a forum, the posts that you see are the "topics."

A "message" is a reply or answer to a post (the "topic") in a forum. These posts are not seen until you click into the "topic" .. then you see the "messages."

If you look at the JForum main forum area, it may be a little more clear to you. Look at some of the forums that have a smaller number of "topics" (i.e. Announcements) to help see the difference.

Hope this helps.

[originally posted on jforum.net by GatorBait3]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

Thanks for the reply GatorBait3

Sorry, I should have clarified. I made the two posts at the top level of the forum. When I click on the forum, I see 2 topics listed, each with zero (0) answers.

However, at the Forum Index level, this forum is listed as having "1 topic" and "1 message" which is what confused me.

[originally posted on jforum.net by heatherfraser]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

heatherfraser wrote:Thanks for the reply GatorBait3

Sorry, I should have clarified. I made the two posts at the top level of the forum. When I click on the forum, I see 2 topics listed, each with zero (0) answers.

However, at the Forum Index level, this forum is listed as having "1 topic" and "1 message" which is what confused me.

Sorry I didn't understand your question the first time.

I think you should see "2 topics" and "0 messages" in the count.

However, I have seen discrepancies in these totals. In my 2.16 version install, the topic and message count match ... even though there are only topics in the forums. So if there are 3 topics, it also says there are 3 messages even though there are no replies under any topic.

I've noticed in this forum, when looking at the message count, it is one less than the total thread messages. For instance, the Announcements shows 5 topics and 25 messages. If you look in the topics there is one more message than reflected in the count. This is probably intentional, as the original topic counts as 1, and the answers then tally as the messages.

What happens to the count if you restart your app server?
[originally posted on jforum.net by GatorBait3]