Hello
My first entry on the blog will be a rather short one, but at least you see that I’m alive. ;)
I’ve comitted changeset 908 which adds the possibility to auto subscribe to topics you post in.
While I was adding this functionality I also modified how the checkbox for subscriptions works. In PunBB 1.2 the checkbox is not doing anything if you’re already subscribed to the topic, no matter if you check/uncheck the box, you stay subscribed. With this changeset for PunBB 1.3, the checkbox will become checked if you’re already subscribed, and if you decide that you no longer want to be subscribed while you’re making a post, just uncheck the checkbox and you will be unsubscribed when you post your reply.
Not that much, but at least something ;)
~Frank H
Every small steps count toward the price :)
February 25th, 2007, at 8:39 pm #awesome work, tho i don’t really use the subscription much, but nice work.
I noticed that you added to db_update.php, good. but you never updated install.php. did you just miss that?
February 26th, 2007, at 2:52 am #Gizzmo: I already pointed that out to him :P
February 26th, 2007, at 11:26 am #Frank isn’t done with subscriptions just yet :)
Sorry for that, I have now commited an updated install.php (changeset 911) :)
I will however go over the code again, adding another lang entry for “Stay subscribed” instead of the current text used. And move some SQL aswell, optimizing it alittle, so I reopened the ticket :)
February 26th, 2007, at 5:50 pm #Pardon my ignorance, and laziness in not looking through the bug /todo list for 1.3, but this is only a subscribe to ‘topic’ improvement.
OK, that’s nice.
But what a lot of folks would appreciate is a subscribe to FORUM feature.
Eg a webhost I use has a vBulletin board and they encourage all customers to subscribe to their ‘Maintenance’ forum, where all maintenance notices are posted. Whenever they are doing any fixes, ANY post to that forum generates an email to me.
punBB can’t do this, and it is a big pity. It doesn’t seem a big enhancement over just subscribing to a specific TOPIC. :)
You can get around this by using extern.php to generate a RSS feed of new forum posts that people can then subscribe to via RSS, for example, but it isn’t as simple as a ’subscribe to forum’ check-box in punBB that users can access as they browse a forum.
March 3rd, 2007, at 2:46 am #With IE7 and FF integrating RSS feed detection into the URL bar, I’d say it’s just as easy as clicking a link to subscribe :P
March 4th, 2007, at 4:20 am #However, if subscribe to forum functionality isn’t included in the core, I’m sure it can be created as an extension. :)
It should be noted that 1.3 does link (in both the body and head) for forum-wide RSS feeds.
http://docs.punbb.org/screens/original/First_Forum.html
March 4th, 2007, at 4:34 am #Sirene: What if 1000 people subscribe to a very busy forum? Then the server has to send 1000 e-mails every time someone posts in that forum. Not good.
March 4th, 2007, at 1:51 pm #Some might want to do this, and have the server that can handle this Rickard.
But some is not most/all, and it’s a bad feature to have on by default, so it’s more of an extension I guess.
March 4th, 2007, at 3:39 pm #Sirena,
I don’t know if this would help any for PunBB 1.2, but Alex King has enhanced the RSS feeds for the forum.
http://alexking.org/projects/punbb/
Worth trying out until 1.3 gets out the door.
March 4th, 2007, at 5:08 pm #Wow, if I’m reading this correctly I’ll be seeing the two things I’ve been wanting on for years (literally). I’m a HUGE fan of subscriptions and the autosubscibe option is key to keeping people engaged in a forum… and I think every forum owner wants sticky members. (see my post here: http://forums.punbb.org/viewtopic.php?pid=35840#p35840 )
The checkbox functionality seems like a bug fix to me as I’d expect that once I subscribe to a post my previous “subscribe to” setting would be retained and displayed the next time I reply. I find myself always checking the “subscribe to” checkbox not knowing for sure if I’m subscribed or not.
Regarding subscribe to forum: Yes, this should not be in the core, but should definitely be a mod. As I pointed out in the thread below most forum owners have a hard time getting a critical mass / community going. This mod would be key in helping shorten that sometimes very long process. I’d use this for every single one of my new forums and then strip out the subscribe to forum functionality once I had a forum with “critical mass” http://forums.punbb.org/viewtopic.php?pid=35852#p35852
Overall, excellent, just super excellent !!!
March 17th, 2007, at 3:34 am #One cool addition to the functionality would be to be able to have all subscribed topics as a feed (in Atom format) that you could subscribe to in your favorite feed reader. Feeds are so much more managable than e-mail. :-)
April 11th, 2007, at 8:36 am #