Question "Automatically" subscribe all members to be notified of any new messages

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These things are possible - anything is possible - but I'm not aware of a GUI-driven or "packaged" solution that meets these kinds of requirements. I realise this topic has been running for a long time and people have not liked the answers we've given in the past - and I would dearly love to change that situation - but I'm totally powerless to provide a solution that meets everyone's individual needs.

There are two easy ways that you can subscribe people to be notified of new messages:

(1) by changing the database; or
(2) by encouraging your users to subscribe themselves to categories or topics.

For example, we encourage every member of the Kunena community to subscribe to the category Official Announcements and News about Kunena but I am certain that there are many of the 30,000 members of this site who would object to receiving email each time a message was posted in that category. And there are the problems when email gets lost, misdirected and people have put their faith in a "system" that's not as reliable as actually visiting a website to see what's happened recently.

So, while it's "possible" for us to administer how we would like users to prefer to behave, sometimes it's preferable to let users do (or not do) things for themselves and to understand and respect their choice if they don't behave how we would prefer them to behave.

I feel optimistic about finding a solution that meets most people's needs but I am unconvinced that we will ever find a solution that meets everyone's needs.

Hi,

Thank you to sum-up the problem.

sozzled wrote: I realise this topic has been running for a long time and people have not liked the answers we've given in the past - and I would dearly love to change that situation - but I'm totally powerless to provide a solution that meets everyone's individual needs.

The following link point to a topic that gives a good reflexion on how to provide a flexible solution, but somewhat complex to setup for non confirmed user.

www.kunena.org/forum/Requests-for-help-o...20-mail-list-gateway

May be you should not focus on a gui packaged solution, but a good old sysadmin one, with some cron job or something. GUI could be build on the top later.

Also, if patch or hack are available to provide such behavior, they aren't easy to find.

sozzled wrote: There are two easy ways that you can subscribe people to be notified of new messages:

(1) by changing the database; or
(2) by encouraging your users to subscribe themselves to categories or topics.

The solution 2 has been proposed many times, and it's OK.
But the requirement, what people ask here, doesn't apply to the situation you describe.

Unfortunately, the user is lazy, especially when the community is not Internet centric. I mean that the website is a support for something that is not related to computer, but just a communication system.

People asking for massive notification system have tried to ask their users. But users said: too slow, too complicated, should I click on each topic? Can we receive a mail, as with the mailing list instead...

sozzled wrote: And there are the problems when email gets lost, misdirected and people have put their faith in a "system" that's not as reliable as actually visiting a website to see what's happened recently.
[...]

I don't think people are expecting a so reliable system, email are not reliable, people should be aware of that.

sozzled wrote: I feel optimistic about finding a solution that meets most people's needs but I am unconvinced that we will ever find a solution that meets everyone's needs.

This "unconvinced" and "encouraging your users to subscribe themselves", is the answer provided for 3 years.

In fact admin asking for massive notification are hopping to have a google groups like system:

A forum with search and private topic + ACL, with archive, with mail notification, and may be mail reply also. May be Kunema is the wrong technology, may be it's a good start.


So just to go forward, what could be done, excluding solution 2?

Regards,
Sylvain.

I have two situations where I would like an easy way in the GUI to subscribe small groups of people to various categories more easily than writing SQL statements. I can try to ask people to subscribe, but it's simply not going to happen and the forums will fail - they'll just go back to using email and miss out on all the benefits that the forums add. Having access in the back end to simply add category subscriptions to user accounts would be quite useful.

In my case I would also like every new person to be automatically subscribed to all the categories. And new categories created should be added to everyone's subscriptions. I don't see why that couldn't be an option that the admin could turn on if they want. If you don't want it, don't use it. Seems like that would meet everyone's needs for automatic subscription.

I totally agree with skyhawk85u, and I used to use a Forum called DiscusPro (sadly no longer being developed and will not integrate into Joomla) which had this feature and allowed users to un-subscribe themselves if they wished.

Our website participation collapsed when we moved to Joomla and lost this feature

I agree with oscarfishlover. I have been a member of forums where the default is to be subscribed to everything. It's a real pain in the posterior, and quickly drove me away. Even after I un-subscribed from all categories, I soon became a subscriber of any new categories that were created.
Treat your users with dignity and respect, and allow them to control their own lives easily, or you won't have many users for long. Or is your forum so bad you have to force users to be interested?

But shouldn't it be up to the administrators to run their own forums the way they want to? In my case forums are taking over from old email lists, so I need to duplicate that functionality but my technologically-challenged users can't figure out how to subscribe themselves to every category. Far easier for everyone if I could take care of that for them myself. It's a huge deal.