[23-AUG-2012] New e-mail notification system implemented on BLF [Updated: 01-OCT-2012]

Or, in other words, "I'm a terrible programmer!". You've probably noticed my plethora of "test" posts recently. After hundreds and hundreds of iterations and many blunders and false starts and dead-end roads, I think we now have in place a custom-made e-mail notification system that we can all be proud of.

The previous system was pretty bad. It sent one notification for every new comment. Many of our users would wake up to find 80 messages in their inbox-- the majority from 1 single thread. Additionally, the system constantly got "jammed" and would throw up ugly error messages and fail to send any notifications at all. So I finally bit the bullet, and learned how to code a bit in PHP, and we now have a significantly better system that won't send you more notifications until you come back to the thread.

To receive e-mail updates for new posts on any thread, just click the "Click to Subscribe" link in the bottom right corner of the first post in the thread. There are also personal settings to automatically subscribe you to every thread you participate in, and to enable/disable all notification emails with one click. By default, all users will be automatically subscribed and will receive email updates. You can set your personal preferences here:

http://budgetlightforum.com/user/ under Edit -> Subscriptions

One very important point: You must make sure to check the Spam folder in your e-mail and mark any BLF notifications as "Not Spam" , since the new BLF notification message seems to be detected as Spam quite frequently.

Please note that the "You are not watching this post, click to start watching" link no longer works for e-mail updates. The list of threads that you have tagged with this system are still available for now, but will probably be removed in the near future. I will give everyone ample warning before disabling the old post watching system.

Please carefully observe the behavior of the new system, and report any anomalies here. But please don't use this thread for "test" posts. Feel free to open a separate "test" thread if desired.

Thanks to everyone for their patience! Have fun.


Update: 26-AUG-2012

I just made some updates to the system to fix two serious issues that were reported to me via PM.

Please note that the method for configuring your personal preferences has changed. The option to disable all subscription emails and the option to disable automatic subscriptions are now located in your user account settings, under the “Edit” tab in the “Subscriptions” section. Anybody who previously changed those settings will need to do so again. Sorry for the inconvenience!


Update: 11-SEP-2012

  • Identified and fixed an important bug that was preventing some users from receiving notification e-mails in threads with more than 10 subscribers.
  • Identified and fixed a bug where multiple comments in a thread would result in multiple notifications being sent out if the first post was featured on the frontpage.

Update: 24-SEP-2012

  • Identified and fixed another bug. The system was mistakenly sending a notification for every comment in a poll thread, instead of checking to see if the user already received a notification.


Update: 01-OCT-2012

  • Made a small change to the message header to avoid it being detected as spam.

Thanks SB! You’re the best.

Many, MANY thanks for the new feature. It makes life a whole lot more enjoyable.

And now that you have honed your PHP skills to a fine edge, can you code me up a Hallie Berry clone? :bigsmile:

Thanks SO MUCH SB!!! This will make my inbox so much cleaner! Keep up the good work!

-Garry

Its a great thing! But the extra emails in my inbox make me fill important!!! :cry:

JK

Thanks to everyone for saying “thanks”! My pleasure.

In addition to the fact that the new system works better, it’s also much simpler for me to maintain and fix, because I hacked it together myself. :wink: It satisfies the slightly obsessive compulsive side of my personality to know exactly what each line of code does.

As for the old “Watcher” system, I disabled its e-mail functionality and left the system in place for the time being for those who use it for bookmarking. What do you think? Should we keep it around for bookmarks? Does anybody use it still? If possible I’d like to get rid of it completely, and maybe add a page that links to all of the user’s subscribed posts.

I have still been using the "My Watched Posts" section (if this is what you mean), but mainly because when browsing with my iPhone it was disabling the email alerts. I do occasionally look back to find a thread (usually if I can't find it quicker from a "search"). What is the difference of the "new page idea" of linking to all of a user's subscribed posts? How is that different?

Thanks,
-Garry

Basically, the “Watched Posts” system has a separate link (in green, below the first post) to bookmark a thread, but it is no longer responsible for sending new post notifications. The new system was devised principally for sending post update e-mails, but now that it’s in place I can easily build on it to create a personal “My subscribed posts” page.

Oh, so clicking the "you are not watching this post" to turn green will now not send out email alerts to updates on those posts. So right now we have to respond to the thread in order to get email alerts? I was using that button to follow (i.e. get email alerts) threads of interest without posting. Will you be coming up with a button to activate the new system to send alerts?

-Garry

Yep, sorry I didn’t make that clear. The new button to subscribe to email updates for a given thread is in the bottom-right hand corner of the first post in every thread. I should probably make that clear in this announcement post.

Ah, I see it now!

-Garry

Updated the original post for clarity

I just made some updates to the system to fix two serious issues that were reported to me via PM.

Please note that the method for configuring your personal preferences has changed. The option to disable all subscription emails and the option to disable automatic subscriptions are now located in your user account settings, under the “Edit” tab in the “Subscriptions” section. Anybody who previously changed those settings will need to do so again. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Take care, have fun.

Edit: good work SB, as always :slight_smile:

It was all O.K I did not get any notification emails for any posts I made or watched. Now I’m getting emails. I want to stop it. I went to setting and unchecked the boxes but I still get emails.

I DO NOT want to get any emails for post and watched posts.
I do want to see which Posts that I made comments on and posted are updates

What do I do?

Did you remember to click "Save" after unchecking the boxes?

Yes I did. I did it all again today, I’ll wait until tomorrow and check my email

Hey there how2,

The checkboxes are for disabling subscriptions. In other words, they should be checked in your case if you don’t want notification emails. I know it’s sort of counter-intuitive, but since I wanted notifications enabled by default, it was easiest to do it this way.

Hope this helps,
Sb

What's the different between

You are not watching this post, click to start watching and Click to Subscribe

in the posts.