Implemented Subscribe to or watch a forum

[Paul B]

I find this feature quite useful on my existing forum software, especially for forums which aren't heavily used.

When a new thread is created or a reply is made, I receive an email.

Here of course the Alerts system could be utilised instead of or in addition to email.

I though that would be a useful feature, especially for e.g. the Have You Seen and Announcements forums.

 

[Morgain]

Waindigo's Node Watcher also does this. A simple enable in admincp and users can Watch a forum on a link just like a thread.
Circle Watch goes further - allows admin to assign Watching to a usergroup - eg new users, or a central forum to keep people involved.

waindigo.com
or
http://xenforo.com/community/members/waindigo.11794/

 

[tekgirl]

Thanks Morgain! Already installed bd-forum-watch and so far, so good.

 

[bluepaw]

Waindigo's Node Watcher also does this. A simple enable in admincp and users can Watch a forum on a link just like a thread.
Circle Watch goes further - allows admin to assign Watching to a usergroup - eg new users, or a central forum to keep people involved.

waindigo.com
or
http://xenforo.com/community/members/waindigo.11794/

Morgain, could you provide a direct link to the add-on by any chance? I have searched around but an unable to locate anything by the name of node watcher or from waindigo.

 

[Morgain]

Morgain, could you provide a direct link to the add-on by any chance? I have searched around but an unable to locate anything by the name of node watcher or from waindigo.

No I cannot do that. I think he has not uploaded it yet - it is very new.
But he is very good and will help you if you contact him.

www.waindigo.com
or his profile here
http://xenforo.com/community/members/waindigo.11794/

I do not have it on my site either. I have the bigger version Circle Watch which creates social groups, including watching forums as the basis. He is finishing the final details on that today. But I can see how Node Watcher works so that is why I can tell you.
I will nag him to put Node Watcher here as an addon.

 

[Razasharp]

Anyone know if Mike or Kier has confirmed this as a forthcoming feature yet?

 

[Vincent]

Anyone know if Mike or Kier has confirmed this as a forthcoming feature yet?

If they didn't do so in this thread, they didn't confirm it.

 

[jrh369]

We moved our community from Webcrossing to vBulletin and were shocked to discover you could not subscribe to forums via email without adding buggy mods which still have the problem you described regarding having login to the site to continue receiving posts. In Webcrossing you had the ability to subscribe to the entire site or any combination of forums via email, rss, nntp, etc.
It seems like the same people who designed the core functionality of vBulletin are still stuck with the same attitude regarding this feature since it is not part of the core product in XenForo.
The world has changed in the last 10 years and users expect and demand to be able to subscribe to forums via email.
We all understand the risks associated with large sites and spam and email using lots of server resources but that "one size fits all" does not apply to the thousands of small specialty communities who need this feature to function and share information in a timely manner. Why not add this to the core product but make admins jump through several hoops to enable it.
We would move from Vbulletin to Xenforo tomorrow if you added this one feature.

 

[Cory Booth]

We moved our community from Webcrossing to vBulletin and were shocked to discover you could not subscribe to forums via email without adding buggy mods which still have the problem you described regarding having login to the site to continue receiving posts. In Webcrossing you had the ability to subscribe to the entire site or any combination of forums via email, rss, nntp, etc.
It seems like the same people who designed the core functionality of vBulletin are still stuck with the same attitude regarding this feature since it is not part of the core product in XenForo.
The world has changed in the last 10 years and users expect and demand to be able to subscribe to forums via email.
We all understand the risks associated with large sites and spam and email using lots of server resources but that "one size fits all" does not apply to the thousands of small specialty communities who need this feature to function and share information in a timely manner. Why not add this to the core product but make admins jump through several hoops to enable it.
We would move from Vbulletin to Xenforo tomorrow if you added this one feature.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Why this feature exists in old classic ASP forum software (SoopPortal - which surprisingly is still kicking) - but not in the new systems.
Which is funny because - despite having over 8,000+ members on this old ASP platform - I don't recall having a problem with sending out the email notifications.

It is also why this was one of the first XenForo plugins I was happy to pay to have developed. "Watch Forum"

Wish it was in the core though...

 

[xfrocks]

Couldn't have said it better myself. Why this feature exists in old classic ASP forum software (SoopPortal - which surprisingly is still kicking) - but not in the new systems.
Which is funny because - despite having over 8,000+ members on this old ASP platform - I don't recall having a problem with sending out the email notifications.

It is also why this was one of the first XenForo plugins I was happy to pay to have developed. "Watch Forum"

Wish it was in the core though...

That add-on is available here http://xenforo.com/community/threads/bd-forum-watch.10679/ (will be added to RM soon)

 

[jrh369]

One other feature related to subscribing to forums is the issue of "subscription inheritance". In Webcrossing the default was when you subscribed to a forum you were automatically subscribed to all the child forums nested under the parent forum. If you wanted to turn this feature off you edited this option in the parent forum settings:

Subscriptions are only for this folder (Yes/No)
Normally, subscriptions automatically include all nested folders, to any level. Checking this setting limits subscriptions to this folder only, so that users will have to subscribe explicitly to any nested folders.

This made it easy for us to organize the forums by topic and add new forums later without everyone subscribed to the parent having to go back and add a subscription to the new sub forum.

Using this functionality we were able to create a Subscription Manger which generated a sitemap/grid of all the forums on one page with checkboxes for adding/removing subscriptions to the 3 various types of subs (Web, Email and Digest). You could see and change all your subscriptions on one page and we had about 200 forums on our site.

 

[Morgain]

Addition to this addon to make Watching a selected forum default for a usergroup.
Very useful for admin on a notices forum or a team project.

 

[intradox]

+1 would be useful for announcement/news forums. Same functionality as watching a thread.

 

[AlexT]

+1 for forum subscription (w/ subforums included) with daily digests.

 

[Morgain]

OK well the good news is that xfrocks is interested.
says it can be done as addition to his addon.

 

[Francesco V.]

+1 to add this feature as a core feature

 

[Paul B]

+1 to add this feature as a core feature

First and foremost, if you like the suggestion that a person has made, like the post.

 

[kontrabass]

+1 and liked.

 

[oman]

I'd definitely like to see this feature. I liked the suggestion as well. Hope it goes well.

 

[Morgain]

Please also see this thread about the weak connection on Announcements and Have You Seen - because this watch forum feature is not available.
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/announcement-hys-are-too-invisible.50783/#post-543082

 

[Andrej]

I hope this gets the "implemented" prefix fairly soon. It's a must have feature.