How To Receive Individual Emails When Subscribing To Forums, Not Digest

[Rocky_BBQ]

Hello,

Is there any way to receive individual emails for each post made when subscribed to forums? My members prefer this over receiving daily or weekly digests.

The main reason for this is to be able to reply to posts via email. This is very useful and helps alot of people.

This was one of the few features I really liked about Yahoo and MSN message boards. You don't have to wait 24 hours to receive posts via email. You receive an email every time a post is made in the forum. Being able to reply via email is very beneficial.

Thanks.

[Dream]

that would generate a lot of emails on bigger forums i think, thats why it wasnt added.

[Rocky_BBQ]

Yes, but that could be a feature turned on or off by the owner/administrator.

Or let the admin choose which members are allowed to use this feature.

Why not at least make it available to the vb owners and let them make that decision?

[Lee Lichterman]

Good Luck. I have been asking for a way to do this and a way to receive e-mails for every post without having to revisit the thread and can't get one answer anywhere.

I was able to hack the menu to make the option for immediate notification to show but I couldn't get it to actually perform the mailing out part. I am still trying to hack that but have had no luck thus far. Without a map of how this interacts in all the php files, I am flying blind.

I am very very very disappointed with the support thus far. I am already looking for a way to switch message boards after only 2 weeks of using this. Every template or hack request has been ignored. I had Discus Pro before this and received answers within minutes to all questions but it was perl based and once it got huge, loaded my server something fierce. I read that this was a great board and it is ............ as long as you dont want anything outside the prepackaged box. It seems that template mods are all anyone cares about since it is mostly used for gaming boards etc where looks are more important than functions tailored to business. I have asked questions over and over and have yet to get a reply on how to tweek the e-mail functions and this is the one thing that always made my old board more popular than the competing web sites.

My users are up in arms over the lack of e-mail for each post and no matter how loud I scream, I can't even get a reply here. Support? What support?

If you ever do get a reply to your question that is useful, let me know. I wouldn't hold my breath though from what I have seen.

Good Luck,

Lee

[Scott MacVicar]

your not asking for support your asking for a feature to be written.

Hacks aren't supported for vBulletin 3 so your really no your own until RC1 is out and vBulletin.org starts supporting hacks.

Though even if it emailed the user how can they reply to the message without visiting the site?

[MJM]

Most members on one of my forums, (which is a small group) just want to know that they had read every post or new thread, and to be able to read messages offline...
You can enable this as per each forum......


Admin Control Panel > Forums Manager > Moderation Options >
which says...
`Email Addresses to Notify When there is a New Post'

* include email addresses there*

Then I go to `User Options', per member, where it says...
- Use 'Email Notification' by default?
"Using this option emails you whenever someone replies to a thread that you have participated in". Yes/No

...And I changed this to No
This makes sure that members won't get 2 emails for every Thread/post.

Members could change this setting, but I do it for them

Mark

[Rocky_BBQ]

Though even if it emailed the user how can they reply to the message without visiting the site?

Ask MSN and Yahoo,

Their message boards work that way. As long as you are a registered member, you can reply to the posts that have been emailed to you, simply by replying to the email. Then your reply shows up on the message board.

Sounds pretty straight forward to me. I ran both a Yahoo and MSN board for over 2 years and this feature worked perfectly all the time.

[Rocky_BBQ]

Most members on one of my forums, (which is a small group) just want to know that they had read every post or new thread, and to be able to read messages offline...
You can enable this as per each forum......


Admin Control Panel > Forums Manager > Moderation Options >
which says...
`Email Addresses to Notify When there is a New Post'

* include email addresses there*

Then I go to `User Options', per member, where it says...
- Use 'Email Notification' by default?
"Using this option emails you whenever someone replies to a thread that you have participated in". Yes/No

...And I changed this to No
This makes sure that members won't get 2 emails for every Thread/post.

Members could change this setting, but I do it for them

Mark

This only tells them that there is a new post, it doesn't send them the actual post does it? Plus, you still can't reply to the post via email.

[Dream]

Ask MSN and Yahoo,

Their message boards work that way. As long as you are a registered member, you can reply to the posts that have been emailed to you, simply by replying to the email. Then your reply shows up on the message board.

that would require configuration on the server, pretty much complex to do. you would have subject conditions on replies, and based on those conditions, post on the boards.

i personally dont see why such an option ("enable email notifications for forums" and "require visit for notifications") couldnt be added, as you could always turn them off if you get sendmail loads too high. im not a dev though, and either way is good for me.

[Scott MacVicar]

Ah to post via email.

That requires you to be able to pass emails into a script and would be a far too specific feature to include by default.

I remember chen had a hack for this in vB2, i'm not sure if he ever released it though.

[Rocky_BBQ]

Whenever you join a MSN or Yahoo message board (community), your user options ask if you want to receive posts:

1. Via email
2. daily digest
3. weekly digest
4. only by reading on forum

If you choose #1 via email, you receive every single post made on that forum within about 5 minutes of it being posted.

With any of these posts received via email, you reply as you would to regular emails, and your reply shows up in the proper location on the forum.

None of the members had to make any special changes to enable this option except to choose that #1 option. You can always change it anytime to the other options.

Obviously, both MSN and Yahoo have their servers configured to handle this feature and it works great.

It works just like mailing lists.

I used to belong to a couple mailing lists that worked the same way. Once you signed up, every email from other members came to you either individually or by digest (your choice when you sign up). There was no actual forum for these lists, but it works basically the same way. You just created a user name and gave your preferred email address. You then confirmed your registration. From there on, you received every email from every member.

[MJM]

This only tells them that there is a new post, it doesn't send them the actual post does it? Plus, you still can't reply to the post via email.

Yeah, the whole message is in the email.
I'm using vB3Bet6

"Plus, you still can't reply to the post via email."

Interestingly though, my isp has been doing maintenance on their email service, causing loss of email access, but I've been able to access the forums to post messages.
I too would like to offer my members the ability to post in via email, but when I asked for this possibility a while back, the answer was that most vb holders want members to go to their web-based forums for commercial reasons.

I also migrated from yahoo....lets face it.. vB is a thousand times better... but I believe vb is missing out on capitalizing on a vast educational market (which is the primary basis for my site) because they haven't bothered to include this feature as a standard option with their software.
My members come to my site only because I provide unique and invaluable information. But for daily correspondence, they use email based programs.

To clarify things a bit I have two licenses...the mothership is still vb2.3 and waiting for vB3 (I think it's been 15 months now), while the new license which I bought specifically for the fact that the email is in the notification (which I made `recieve all posts' adjustments as explained above) is used for my core group.

Listen up vB..I love your software program, but if another similar program entered the market which provided the above requested features...
I would dump these two licenses and make the change.
Mark
My biggest headache (when vB3 goes final), will be to dispense all the clutter that they have worked so hard to develop, but then ...I really don't know what the finished product is going to look like...

[Scott MacVicar]

This definately wont be going into version 3 since a feature freeze is in place but I would be glad to take this on as a feature for 3.1.

Though i'm going to ask chen about his vB2 version.

[MJM]

This definately wont be going into version 3 since a feature freeze is in place but I would be glad to take this on as a feature for 3.1.

This is excellent news!
I will spread the word that this may be possiblity in a future upgrade.
This will open vB to a vast new market of customers

Though I'm going to ask chen about his vB2 version.

If this became possible, I would consider keeping one license as vB2 until vB3.1 was released.

[Lee Lichterman]

your not asking for support your asking for a feature to be written.

Hacks aren't supported for vBulletin 3 so your really no your own until RC1 is out and vBulletin.org starts supporting hacks.

Though even if it emailed the user how can they reply to the message without visiting the site?

I understand this but it seems that the limit on a user visiting the site before receiving another e-mail is an "extra" line of code or two that could be easily removed to enable what I am asking for. I have also seen others requesting the same thing though most were in VB version 2 when I searched and that fix does't work in version 3.

Sorry for being so short tempered but this is a major gripe on my board right now since we had it before in our Discus Pro board and I am catching some heat to get this fixed.

As to why anyone would want it if they can't reply. I have a ton of users that are working during the day thus they really shouldn't be visiting message boards from the office computers. These people are all in the market pretty heavy and want to stay tuned to what is going on and want to see every post, even if they can't respond so they can call a broker, take a "break" and get to a laptop to respond or trade etc.

I myself use a web enabled cell phone to read all my e-mails as an administrator and want to see all posts made so I know if someone is causing trouble, if the site is having problems etc also as well as for the reasons the other day workers want to see all posts

================

As far as replying via e-mail, it isnt that hard a script. We had it on our old board though it wasn't turned on until near the end so I can live without it though it is a nice feature.

I am not in any way saying Discus Pro is a better board as it was perl based and really loaded down my server once we got to 1100 users and 40,000 posts vs VBulletin where I have seen 40000 users and a million posts and it still runs fine. I only mention that board software because it did have some nice features that made it easy to customize and I could administer it in my sleep. -ggg- If loads for e-mail got high for an active site, the administrator could always turn it off but there are many of us that could really use it. Out of my 1100 users or so, I think I had 400 using it full time and I just had a cron job that sent out the mail when server loads permitted. Few used the mail on the most active threads but instead just used it for teh special events thread that rarely had new posts but had the important ones like rate cuts, Sept 11th etc.

I guess if people aren't used to it, they really don't mind but when users come from a board that had it and then it disappears, they really notice.

My interest in the forum immediate notification is for example, my site has New Threads locked out for users so we can easily track messages in linear form. The main active forum has a thread just for September and all posts are made to that thread until October hits, then I will start a new thread for October and all posts will go there etc. When October rolls around, everyone is going to have to re-subscribe to that thread or they wont get real time e-mail.

Now imagine today was October 1st and for example right now the DOW Jones is down 131 points, they might like to know they are losing their butts. -gggg- As it is configured right now, they wouldn't know until tonight after the market is closed which is too late.

=============================

As far as what I have found up to this point, on the forum mail options, I found some code last week in teh subscription.php file ( Note singular subscription and NOT subscriptionS plural ) where the options were 0,1,2,3,4, for thread notification but only 0, 2, 3, 4 for forum notification. I modified a string somewhere to add the missing "1" but I will be darned if I can find it now. I think I am burned out right now from doing some other coding.

At teh time, I thought it failed to work because though it showed on the menu, I couldn't get it to send the mail out. Of course, this was the second day I had the board and I didnt understand that if I made a post, it wouldn't e-mail me. Now that I know that, I have created a bogus UserID to test mail with and if I can figure out how I did it before, it might really work.

Anyway, if someone out there is more fresh than I am, I am 99% sure this is where I did the hack. There was a line like if thread subscription, show options 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and if type = forum 0, 2, 3, I simply added the missing 1 and it did make it show on the menu.

Good Luck,

Lee