thanks muchly for the quick response but i'm not sure how to apply this. prob perfectly obvious and elementary but... i did mention i'm dense... :(

i'd appreciate a walkthru from someone or link to a blog where that macro is being used in the way i mentioned ie link in the menu which will display stories in order of last modified.

that what i suggested is only possible on a "trusted website" (what is that btw?) and not on antville then i'm wondering if it is a hassle to implement? am i the only one thinking this would be a very useful feature indeed?

excuse my boring persistance. maybe i should have explained that i understand that the "site.history" macro is used to list and define how many of either comments or stories are displayed in the recently modifed box. but it is an either-or situation as the display options (skins - recently modified box) obviously won't fit both. would a second set of "site history" and "modified box" do the trick?

after much searching i figured out that this

---

storylist limit="x" show="stories" sortby="modifytime" order="desc" itemprefix="whatever" itemsuffix="whatever"

---

would work as alternative when stuffed into the sidemenu.

pestering over. :)

[edit:] no, not over. it doesn't sort by modified time when a comment is added to a story. :(

when you add a comment to a story, you don't modify the story, so its modify date isn't changed; that should have been obvious from the start. what you want is something like changing a story's modified date when it's commented on, or introducing a new parameter that tracks this. however, i think this approach wouldn't yield a good result.

i would rather try to cram more information into the 'recently modified' list by adding an option that displays only one comment per story. that means, if there's a very lively discussion attached to a story, only the last comment appears in the list. this ensures that the 'recently modified' list isn't flooded with entries that flush out comments on other stories, and people still won't miss the discussion, since the relevant item in the list will always change when a new comment is added (or an older one is modified again), and thus make the reader aware of the discussion. once s/-he goes there, the reader will see more comments that might also have been added since his/her last visit anyway.

this would be much smarter, i think. but it could still be improved, for example, once you open a story, the 'recently modified' list item of this story could be expanded again to show all recent changes there.

update: another aspect of 'recently modified' list flooding is of course, that people could edit their comments, when they have something to add to them (the comments will rise to the top of the recently modified queue again, you don't have to be afraid of being ignored), instead of posting several additional comments.

it should have been obvious but it wasn't - i was concentrating too much on something else.

everything you say about cramming more info in "recntly modifed" or rather restricting to one comment per story makes sense and is clean and lean but you lose some of the joy that way. part of the fun scanning the recently modified is seeing who is busy responding. something one would lose by following your suggested route.

apart from it being more work, prob a hassle and all that for people who already have enough on their plate (and many thanks to antville makers btw if i haven't said so before) i'd be interested to know what the reasons against my approach would be. i'm just asking since (obviously) i am not equipped to do more than make suggestions and ask.

(...) but it could still be improved, for example, once you open a story, the 'recently modified' list item of this story could be expanded again to show all recent changes there.

sounds rather attractive despite missing the fun on the front page.

part of the fun scanning the recently modified is seeing who is busy responding. something one would lose by following your suggested route.

good point, for many people this is very important information. this reminds me of henso.com: under each story, next to the link that takes you to the comments, there's a list of the comments' authors; a really neat feature. when you implement a new mode for the 'recently modifed' list that would lose this information, you could do exactly this: add a little list in the appropriate place.

i'd be interested to know what the reasons against my approach would be.

which approach exactly? you originally suggested ordering stories by last modified date, but, as you already know, that doesn't help. when i said that my suggestion about adding a 'last commented on' property to stories also wouldn't help, i thought of the 'recently modified' list. as long as you don't do anything about a flood of messaged in new discussions, a single comment on an old story will disappear just as quickly, no matter how it made it into the list in the first place. however, if you think of the storylist macro, such an option actually might be a really nifty idea.

i'd gladly help with implementing something like that, but it would be cool if one of the antville developers could give some advice first: would a new 'last commented on' property in the story prototype make sense, to facilitate db queries that compile the list kohlehydrat wants, performace-wise?

by the way, why exactly aren't you equipped to do more than make suggestions? you obviously have acces to a computer, and all the software you need to enhance antville is free and open source, and there are lots of friendly people who'd help you :-)

[ which approach?] yeah... well i was casting around for a tool that would do what i had in mind not being sure if it didn't already exist. from a programmer's viewpoint prob not too clear anymore so i'll re-iterate:

the idea (approach) is simply:

1. having the option for displaying x-amount of comments, just as they are being typically used now (unchanged because this is one of antville's best features) and in addition

2. having the option of displaying in brief, unbloated form y-(seperately definable)-amount of stories that were modified by comments.

in its simplest form i thought it could look sort of like what i put into my sidemenu (at bottom, maybe you saw it when you were there). i used the storylist-macro but that would need to be able to sort the stories by when they were also modified by a comment.

so you'd have both sets of info: the flowing river of comments fun and the much more static but longer-term informative list of where action was actually happening.

[on missing comments by being away for some weeks] hehehehe, on some sites you don't have to be away for a week, several hours is quite enough. :) a site i was thinking of was meisterkoechin's. a site like that would be a prime candidate** for such a feature because on an average day it has alot of traffic, many of the stories are of general interest beyond being a currrent day's offering. so you get people commenting on stories from weeks back while a busy exchange is happening for instance in the day's latest and most current story and half an hour later you'd have no idea that someone commented let alone where. there are quite a number of sites like that where information drops off into the deeps or interesting comments get lost.

** obviously blog owners (would) make their own choices from options offered on what navigation they want and find useful. watching the traffic and dynamics, i felt there was a useful, navigational bit missing, certainly not that exisiting ones needed to be changed and of course am not telling anyone how to run their blog.

[not being equipped] what i meant was: not being equipped to programme anything myself. all i can do is make suggestions and get on someone else's back who can programme until i'm told why my idea is unpractical or can be achieved differently. :)