Notifications for RSBandB

Continuing on from my status on http://www.rsbandb.com/runewire/Meltdown

Shane you say it would be too hard for the server to constantly be checking but what if the user tells the server first?

Like If anyone posts on my status, a simple 1 is written to a text file I own. Next time I log on, I read the text file from the server if there is any 1's printed, if there is > display notification pointing to the post which was commented on.

This seems a lot less stressful then the server constantly saying "Has anyone posted yet? Has anyone posted yet? Has anyone posted yet? Has anyone posted yet?"

That's exactly why it would be so complex. Assume for every time someone posts we increment a notification count on your post. Every time RW is viewed we'd then query for which posts of yours have a notification count > 0. This would be mostly simple to implement but where it becomes hard is if someone else wants to be notified when they get a reply to a reply on a topic and so on.

There are two other reasons why I won't do this:
1. There's another area of the website that could use much better notifications.
2. Just wait until you see what's coming next.