Question Category Subscriptions/Subscribe reports incorrectly

Hi,

I have found a problem with Category Subscriptions being reported incorrectly thus confusing users as to their subscription status. We are using Kunena 1.6.4.

Whether or not a user is subscribed to a category, the Kunena Control Panel User Manager shows they have no Category Subscriptions. Yet when logged into the fourm the presence of an "Unsubscribe" button suggests they are subscribed.

To test this:

1. Create a new user
2. Login as the new user, and examine a parent forum category (say called "Patches"). The parent forum shows a Subscribe button, suggesting the user is not subscribed. A check of the Kunena Control Panel User Manager confirms this. The Category subscriptions tab does not list any subscriptions. The Subscriptions tab does not list any subscriptions and actually states "No subscriptions found for this user".
3. Now click the Subscribe button on the parent forum category ("Patches"). The button changes to show "Unsubscribe". A check of the User Manager show nothing different to before, yet the button in the forum suggests they are subscribed.

Hence, I am subscribed to the "Patch" forum but the administrator tool does not report this. Or am I?

Can anyone confirm whether or not my user is really subscribed? And whether or not the incorrect reporting is a Kunena bug?

Thanks,
Annabel

K 1.6.4 is unsupported. Since K 1.6.4 was released there have been 4 new releases of Kunena and over 200 issues have been attended to. Please upgrade to see if your problems have been addressed. Thank you.

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Can any one confirm this is a problem and it is indeed fixed in a later version?

We use Kunena as a plugin to our company's Joomla website. In fact we make software ourselves so are appreciative of the software development process and need for users to move onto new versions. However, it is not practical for an operational business to be in a continual state of needing to upgrade. There is significant financial and time cost involved every month or two, in contracting our web developer to upgrade Kunena and to ensure our customised template continues to work. We have been frustrated because our web developer recommended Kunena as the best forum for Joomla but still after several upgrades there are issues with the fundamental capability of subscriptions and email notification are not working.

So, we would like to be our issue is understood, and it's correction confirmed as fixed in a newer version before embarking on the upgrade path.

Thanks,
Annabel

You can do one of two things:

(1) Upgrade (because that's the sensible thing to do anyway) and then we can try to answer questions about problems that you might be having with the latest version; or

(2) Read the release note information for K 1.6.5, K 1.7.0 and K 1.7.1 in the Wiki (sorry, there have been only 3 releases since the one you're using).

Upgrading from K 1.6.4 -> K 1.7.1 is a single-step process that usually takes less than one minute. See K 1.6 and K 1.7 Upgrade Guide . Obviously, you should take a backup of your site before upgrading any software.

Hi,

(1) The upgrade sounds straightforward. We have a staging system where we can test this. Are we likely to need to do anything to our CSS and templates? Or are they likely to be unaffected?

We agree that upgrading is sensible but from a business operations and risk point of view it is not practical to be doing this often.

(2) I have looked through the release notes but they suffer the same problems my own organisation has with release notes. They are written by programmers for users but each group speaks about the same thing in a different language and from a different point of view. Release notes rarely describe changes and fixes in user speak; in terms of the experience the user has using the software. Frequently they are written from a programming change point of view not a user level of understanding. So, whilst I can see numerous references to changes relating to category subscriptions it is unclear whether they are my problem.

Thanks,
Annabel

The answer to the first question is: it depends. It depends on what changes you've made or whether you are using the standard Kunena Blue Eagle template without any changes. If you're using the default template, without changes, then there should be no problem at all.

The answer to the second question is that this is a community-driven self-help resource and the "work" done by the moderator team is voluntary. There is no company behind Kunena, there is no income (apart from the occasional donation made by generous users) and we do the best as our time permits. As I wrote before, it's the sensible thing to do to maintain your installation of Kunena at the latest revision level. However, if you would like a dedicated, fee-for-service offering, I could probably organise for someone to give your site the kind of attention that you're enquiring about.

If, after you have upgraded to K 1.7.1, you still have problems, please feel free to ask questions and be sure to include your configuration report with those questions so that we know the context you're working with. Good luck.