Instant Thread Notification for Subscribed Forums

[FQ-Joseph]

Instant Thread Notification for Subscribed Forums


Purpose:
This plugin allows your members to select "Instant Email Notification" when they are subscribing to a forum, instead of just the default Daily/Weekly Digests. When a new thread is posted in a subscribed forum, all subscribed users are instantly sent an email alerting them.

Modifications:
Code Hacks: 0
New Products: 1
New Plugins: 1
New Phrases: 2
New Templates: 0
Template Changes: 1

Installation Instructions:

Step 1 (Template Change):
Find the following in the "subscribe_choosetype" template (located under "Subscribed Thread Templates" in the template manager):

<if condition="$show['subscribetothread']">
<option value="1" $emailselected[1]>$vbphrase[instant_notification_by_email]</option>
</if>


Replace with:

<option value="1" $emailselected[1]>$vbphrase[instant_notification_by_email]</option>

(Just remove the if statement)

Step 2 (install product):
Import the product-instantnotif.xml file into your Product Manager.

Enjoy! - It's installed! :D

Any users who were already subscribed to a forum will need to re-subscribe in order to select this new option. ;)

You can change the email subject & body by editing the "foruminstantnotify" phrases located under the "Email Body Text" & "Email Subject Text" phrase types. :)

[Daniel]

Installed, quite nice. Thank you.

[Lea Verou]

I really needed this! Thanks! :D

[nexialys]

the template alteration you suggest will deactivate the choice from the settings to display or not the subscription feature... so everybody will always have the right to subscribe, even if the admin set this to NO... not a good thing...

btw your hack work without the template alteration... and this is a good idea for small sites... but would have a heavy serverloads on websites that bring hundreds of posters each days...

[Snake]

Thanks for this!

[FQ-Joseph]

the template alteration you suggest will deactivate the choice from the settings to display or not the subscription feature... so everybody will always have the right to subscribe, even if the admin set this to NO... not a good thing...

I don't think so... ? The template by default will only show the "Instant" option if the users clicked to subscribe to a thread. The alteration simply removes that check, and shows the "Instant" option on all subscribe options pages. If subscriptions are disabled, then that page shouldn't even be accessible (which would be detirmined by a higher "if" then the one I removed). :)


this is a good idea for small sites... but would have a heavy serverloads on websites that bring hundreds of posters each days...

Again, I don't think this would be a big problem. My hack uses the mail queuing system, so if you've got a lot of topics being created (and a lot users subscribed to forums) simply activate the queue system and that should help with the load. Also, this plugin will only send an email when a new trhead is created, not when new posts are made. :)

[CyberRanger]

Thx! Exactly what I needed.

[Thomas Muhr]

Dear Joseph,
thanks for this great plug-in, we have successfully implemented it. However, there would be indefinite happiness if we could get the following:
1. When a forum is subscribed change Forum Tools menu item to "Unsubscribe from this Forum"
2. Somehow display the state of being subscribed to a specific forum on the forum's main page.
3. Include the body of the newly posted thread in the notification sent (as is done with thread level notifications) (shouldnt this be an accessible PHP variable??)
4. Being able to recursively un/subscribe to a forum and all its sub forums.

If you can give us any hint to accomplish this I would be very grateful.

Thanks in advance
- Thomas

[Peter Walker]

Hi,
I have installed this hack and find it useful. However, I would like to include the actual text of the new post in the Email.

Here is the contents of my $vbphrase[foruminstantnotify]


Reply here: $vboptions[bburl]/showthread.php?p=$newpost[postid]
Posted by : $bbuserinfo[username]
$post[message] $pagetext
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DO NOT REPLY VIA EMAIL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Replies sent by email will go to the administrator, not the original poster!
To send a private message to the poster, click on the "Reply here" link
(above) and then on $bbuserinfo[username].
Notes:
- This Topic Notification was sent to: $user[username],
- You are currently subscribed to the forum: $foruminfo[title_clean]
- To unsubscribe from this thread, please visit this page:
$vboptions[bburl]/subscription.php?do=usub&f=$foruminfo[forumid]
The Rife Forum - Instant Subscribed Forum Notify - English (US)


As you can see, I tried both $post[message] and $pagetext (which work with other Email templates), but neither of them will echo the post text.

I would appreciate it if this capability could be added, or someone can tell me how I can add it to my system.

[Brock Hamilton]

in case anyone else wants to know this, Like I just did,

You have to use $newpost[message]

[thewump]

It's awesome. Thanks.

This really is the ideal plugin for anyone trying to migrate people from a list server to a forum.

Best

Keith

[majorxp]

Is there a way to turn this on for only one Forum?

[Nrat]

Ok I would like it to e-mail a user when there is a new post in a thred that he has started of has posted in.
I want this to work all the time I tryed yours but it didnot work

[3z3k3l]

Sweet! Thanks

[Aylwin]

Finally! I've been waiting for this one. Thanks!

[lionheart53]

I'm using this mod but would also love to have a way to subscribe to a parent forum and it automatically add subscriptions to all child forums. Is there anything out there already built?

[banjolawyer]

Has anyone modified this plugin so as to email subscribers with new posts to the thread as well, rather than only emailing concerning new threads?

[smithvillemike]

Will this work for just one forum and not for all of them. I'm trying to get people moved over from a yahoo listserv and this would work by having them subscribe to just one forum and not all the forums.

thanks

Mike

[Tralala]

Will this work for just one forum and not for all of them.

yes. when a user subscribes to a forum, this is a new option for that one forum.

[majorxp]

Can you enable its use for only one forum? I have too much traffic to allow users to do this for all the forums.

[mdcarlson]

Great mod! I added an additional part to the where clause to limit this to only certain usergroupids.

Mark

[Bloory]

Great mod! I added an additional part to the where clause to limit this to only certain usergroupids.

Mark

Would you care to share please :)

[kellzey]

This works great.

How can the plug in be modified so that it will send instant notification of ALL POSTS (including replies to topics) in a subscribed forum instantly, instead of just NEW topics?

If someone can help me figure this out, I will be most grateful.

Thanks,

Karl

[Taipa]

Can you enable its use for only one forum? I have too much traffic to allow users to do this for all the forums.

Me too. Is this an option?

[ricknlida]

Noob reporting in. I love this Mod, but we just re-did all our boards so we have complaints about how tedious it is to unsubscribe one at a time, the re-subscribe one at a time.

Is there a hack/mod/etc. that will display all boards, maybe with checkboxes to subscribe or unsubscribe to any or all or selected boards?

Thanks!

[Boofo]

Does this work ok for 3.5.4? ;)

[ricknlida]

Yes. That's what we're running.

Additionally I'd ask, if the answer to my original question is "no", then is there a way to subscribe to a Category to include all the boards under it?

...just looking to try to avoid that one at a time subscribing and unsubscribing...

[Boofo]

I don't think so... ? The template by default will only show the "Instant" option if the users clicked to subscribe to a thread. The alteration simply removes that check, and shows the "Instant" option on all subscribe options pages. If subscriptions are disabled, then that page shouldn't even be accessible (which would be detirmined by a higher "if" then the one I removed). :)

Has anyone confirmed this is how it works?

[2kmcoupe]

Brilliant! Thanks! I too am in the process of transition some of my more stubborn users off a yahoo group and this will certainly help me along.
Wonderful!

[s.blair]

Would also love to have it email for ALL POSTS and not just new Threads alone.

Anyone solved this?

[labrocca]

What happens if we don't make that template change? What adverse effects are there? I just know I will be updating to 3.6 eventually and prefer to change the templates as little as possible.

[Aylwin]

If you don't make the template change then the users won't be able to see an option for instant email notification when they subscribe to a forum. In other words, the mod won't work.

[webswimr]

I've installed this in my 3.6.1 forum (recently upgraded all the way from 2.3.5!). In my old installation, I had hacked to automatically subscribe to new threads that are created within forums to which you are subscribed and also send email notification of the first post of the new thread. This add-on did almost exactly what I needed in the upgraded forum.

I did modify this a bit in my installation. Like others, I wanted that initial post emailed out with the body of the message and wanted instant email subscribers to forums to receive email copies of ALL posts in the new threads, not just the opening post of a new thread. I also wanted the email notification of the new thread opening post to look the same as the email notification for all subsequent posts.

My method of achieving this was to make the template change as specified, modify the foruminstantnotify phrases for email subject & body text to match those found for the notify phrases (with minor variable changes below), and modify the plugin code as per the attached file.

The plugin change grabs the username of subscribed users for use in the email notification and adds an insert query to add a thread subscription for each forum instant subcriber found.

The changes to the email body notify phrase that need to be made when copying to the email body foruminstantnotify phrase are:

change $pagetext to $newpost[message]
change $touser[username] to $subscribe[username]

Worked for me... maybe it will also work for others looking for similar results.

[shanemcse]

This is not working with 3.6.1.

This is what I get after removing the If statement

The following error occurred when attempting to evaluate this template:

The conditional on line 28 appears to be missing its end tag (</if>). The template will not function properly unless this is fixed.

This is likely caused by a malformed conditional statement. It is highly recommended that you fix this error before continuing, but you may continue as-is if you wish.

If I ignore the error then I can no longer subscribe to threads

[Tralala]

This is not working with 3.6.1.


Was working okay for me with 3.6.4. Still, here's a newer one (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=141280), with more features, supported up to 3.6.5 currently.

[students_forum]

works on 3.7.2 :)