Forums / Cotonti / Extensions / New Notifier module

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GHengeveld
#1 2012-07-29 12:48

Currently I'm working on a complete rewrite of the Notifier module and accompanying HTML Email plugin. Features will include:

  • Allows subscription to several content areas: forum topic, structure category (page/forum category), comment thread (page) or PMs. More can be added.
  • Allows auto-subscribe to your own content, according to user preferences.
  • Receive automatic notification by email of new content, including a summary of the newly posted content and links to see the content on-site or unsubscribe.
  • Emails can be sent immediately or as a daily, weekly or monthly digest (requires Cron Manager), according to user preferences.
  • User preferences can be configured for each content area (topic/category/comments/pm).
  • Assigns template tags for quick subscribe/unsubscribe in content areas.
  • Includes standalone overview of subscriptions and user preferences.
  • Emails can be in HTML or plain text, according to user preferences. Notification by PM is no longer supported.
  • HTML email requires a custom plugin which uses CoTemplate and Emogrifier to automatically generate cross-platform HTML emails with inline styles.
  • Includes default HTML email templates based on HTML Email Boilerplate.

As you see, some functionality is provided by other plugins (HTML email and cron). These plugins provide general-purpose functionality, in order to allow these features to be used by other extensions as well.

Do you think Notifier needs other features as well? Let me know.

This post was edited by GHengeveld (2012-07-29 13:29, 11 years ago)
elfrenazo
#2 2012-07-29 15:33

notifications in forums and comments would be nice, it is necessary to follow the themes.

I mean notifications to users.

fraze
#3 2012-07-31 11:03

will the notifier module be able to show a popup when you login to say you have a new PM?  i've run vbulletin and phpbb forums in the past where you got a visible notification on your screen when you got a PM.

Currently the notification you get shown in the userbox isnt always noticed by users.

GHengeveld
#4 2012-07-31 22:04

You can already do that with the existing global profile tags and a little javascript. I think the tag you need is {PHP.usr.profile.user_newpm} which will be 1 if the user has a new pm. You could write something like this (JavaScript):

if ({PHP.usr.profile.user_newpm}) {
  alert("You have a new private message");
}

This will show the alert every time until the pm is read, which may not be what you want. You could use a cookie to show the alert only once.

Nevertheless, the feature you describe got me to think about alternative ways to notify a user. I don't plan on implementing other channels such as PM, SMS or push notifications (e.g. APNS), but I will look into an easy way to allow other plugins to add such functionality. I think I'll at the very least include some global template tags to allow you to notify users on-site about updates. Of course there will also be hooks so plugins can hook into the notifier module.

This post was edited by GHengeveld (2012-07-31 22:50, 11 years ago)
Twiebie
#5 2012-08-06 01:12

Looks promising, Gert. Definitely a very useful plugin for Cotonti.

May I ask out of curiosity why PM notifications will not be implemented?

GHengeveld
#6 2012-08-06 12:04

PM notifications will not be implemented because PM is on-site, which means you'd still have to visit the site in order to see your notifications. The goal of the module is to increase user engagement by sending them notifications in a way which does not require them to visit the site. Basically it's a way to prevent people to forget about the site.

Recently I've been working on getting both HTML and plaintext emails working. Here's a screenshot of two messages (HTML and plaintext, as viewed in GMail) sent by Notifier to two different users which are subscribed to the same topic. One has enabled HTML emails, while the other has disabled it.

notifier_68.png

Here's a screenshot of the subscriptions overview and settings panel:

notifier_settings_68.png

Twiebie
#7 2012-08-06 14:20

Looks very good, Gert!

Trustmaster
#8 2012-08-06 17:55

Going great so far! I didn't even think it would have such subscription options.

May the Source be with you!
elfrenazo
#9 2012-08-06 19:08

interesting yes

Kingsley
#10 2012-08-07 17:26
#35088 Trustmaster:

Going great so far! I didn't even think it would have such subscription options.

me neither, looks very nice Gert.. think this plugin will end up being used a lot :)

 

tensh
#11 2012-08-14 19:24

Looks great :) When can we expect the release? Any early version to bugtest?

GHengeveld
#12 2012-08-14 19:37

I'll put it on github soon. I'm still working on a practical way to handle the periodic digests, which is a bit of a struggle. Expect a release candidate within a week.

Added 1 weeks later:

The beta is now available on Github: https://github.com/GHengeveld/cot-notifier

Periodic digests and auto-subscribe is not yet supported. Only the 'forumtopic' area is completely implemented so far. Everything else should work fine.

This post was edited by GHengeveld (2012-08-24 13:57, 11 years ago)
Twiebie
#13 2012-08-23 22:07

Nice!

I wonder though, how does one subscribe to an individual topic? I see there's a configuration panel but no tags are listed for including the subscribe links to the topics row for example?
"Assigns template tags for quick subscribe/unsubscribe in content areas."

Thanks.
This post was edited by Twiebie (2012-08-23 22:13, 11 years ago)
GHengeveld
#14 2012-08-24 07:26

Ah, I forgot to add them to the config block. The tags are assigned by cot_notifier_tags(). Here's the list:

  • NOTIFIER_SUBSCRIBED - true/false
  • NOTIFIER_TOGGLE - link to toggle subscription on/off
  • NOTIFIER_TOGGLE_URL - url to toggle subscription on/off
  • NOTIFIER_TOGGLE_TEXT - text indicating what the toggle will do: Subscribe/Unsubscribe
  • NOTIFIER_SUBSCRIPTIONS - link to list of subscriptions
  • NOTIFIER_SUBSCRIPTIONS_URL - url to list of subscriptions

Normally you'll only need to add {NOTIFIER_TOGGLE} and {NOTIFIER_SUBSCRIPTIONS} in forums.posts.tpl.

dedushka
#15 2012-08-24 09:05

but how to use it for page.tpl, page.list.tpl, etc.?

need tutorial to simple start...

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