Hello,

I have a question regarding sending emails. Currently when I start a topic, it is sent only to those who follow the forum. If they want to get any following posts, they have specifically to follow this topic. For some users, this is very annoying. I'm looking for a way to force the post to be sent to all users, no matter if they follow the forum/topic or not.

I know about the "Automatically follow every forum" feature. This is not a big deal since members have to follow the forum only once. But getting the follow-up posts from the new topics is a big issue.

I'm running an options trading forum. This is how it works: when I open a new trade, I post a new topic in the trades forum. Member who follow the forum get an email. So far so good. But when I close the trade, I post a new post in the same topic. That means that members have to follow the new topic for each new trade to get a follow-up for that trade, and this is extremely annoying. Most forums have a feature to force sending a post to all members. I don't understand why you don't have this feature. It should not be too difficult to implement. Are you planning to have it in the future releases?

steadyoptions, on 20 Jan 2013 - 06:19, said:

I'm running an options trading forum. This is how it works: when I open a new trade, I post a new topic in the trades forum. Member who follow the forum get an email. So far so good. But when I close the trade, I post a new post in the same topic. That means that members have to follow the new topic for each new trade to get a follow-up for that trade, and this is extremely annoying. Most forums have a feature to force sending a post to all members. I don't understand why you don't have this feature. It should not be too difficult to implement. Are you planning to have it in the future releases?

Uh, no, most forums do not have such a feature. Certainly not one which the user cannot override - what you are describing is called "spam", and is technically illegal.

How is it spam if the user signed up for a forum and elected to be a member? Spam is something which is unsolicited. If my members want to get trade alerts but have to follow each individual topic to get them, many of them find that really annoying.

I'm not saying the user should not have the ability to override it. And yes, most forums do have this ability.

steadyoptions, on 20 Jan 2013 - 16:26, said:

How is it spam if the user signed up for a forum and elected to be a member? Spam is something which is unsolicited. If my members want to get trade alerts but have to follow each individual topic to get them, many of them find that really annoying.

I'm not saying the user should not have the ability to override it. And yes, most forums do have this ability.

No forum has this feature. They can subscribe people to all new topics, but not once have I ever seen a forum that allows you to force subscribe individuals to every single reply. Mostly because that's a fast track to a Spamhaus listing.

This is the sort of thing best left to hooks, not the base product.

Just use RSS for each forum. It will show a new post in a topic.

I was not talking about forcing subscribe individuals to every single reply. I'm looking to have an ability as an administrator to send certain critical posts to all users. I know this feature exists in Simple Machines and I'm sure it exists in other forums. I'm aware about bulk email feature, but it takes a long time to be sent while posts are sent within seconds.

Okay, just me brainstorming. Here is two other ideas:

1. Use the Facebook feature when you make your post. If you don't use Facebook with your forum, you can (if you already have one Facebook account) create a new Facebook account and let your community know to follow that. Not sure if FB would allow you to have private, approve-only members for a page or a group or even if the FB post feature works that way.

2. Create a separate blog. Call it The Critical Trades or whatever suits you. Have your community follow that blog. You can use 'Blog This' to send a post to a blog entry.

These aren't super simple or elegant by any means but just trying to offer suggestions.

What I'm doing now is sending posts by twitter, so members can get them. However, those are not real solutions, those are workarounds. Here is an email I got from one of my members:

"I subscribed to two option services about the same time. I don't have to do anything with the other service. I don't have to follow anything. When they have a trade they just send me an email. For you guys, I have to go and find something to follow. I then have follow and hope I get notifications that you adjusted something. If I forget to follow something I am screwed. This all takes a lot of time."

Some people are okay to constantly go to the forum and follow topics. Others want a simple solution: they want all trade alerts to be sent to them. They are busy. They don't have time to go to the forum each time and follow the topic. It's a simple feature, why can't IPS implement it? Admins who want to abuse it can always send bulk emails.

one further suggestion: In 3.4.1, there is the share button on each post. Look for the three point, right pointing icon next to the post number. If you click on the post number or that icon, you get the share menu displayed.

I believe in your ACP settings, you can configure to allow emailing of the post as a share option. So you could post something and then click on it and hit share. The real question is how it is sent or if you have to enter a single or a slew of email addresses or if you could email an entire group. If you could do the group option, you would be set.

surferboy, on 20 Jan 2013 - 04:18, said:

one further suggestion: In 3.4.1, there is the share button on each post. Look for the three point, right pointing icon next to the post number. If you click on the post number or that icon, you get the share menu displayed.

I believe in your ACP settings, you can configure to allow emailing of the post as a share option. So you could post something and then click on it and hit share. The real question is how it is sent or if you have to enter a single or a slew of email addresses or if you could email an entire group. If you could do the group option, you would be set.

Okay, I tried that - it opens a window where your are asked to enter email addresses which of course is not realistic.

Okay, I tried that - it opens a window where your are asked to enter email addresses which of course is not realistic.

There is a hook that allows you to tag people(like you mention someone on twitter) and alets them of your post.

I use that and it works very well!

Zen Danger, on 20 Jan 2013 - 11:17, said:

There is a hook that allows you to tag people(like you mention someone on twitter) and alets them of your post.

I use that and it works very well!

What is the name of the hook?

P.S. But that requires me to manually tag all members?

I'm really surprised and disappointed that nobody from IPS staff commented or responded to this post.

Well, it is a holiday weekend so I hope you keep that in mind, and also, there are literally hundreds of posts coming in that would be considered 'complaint suggestions,' meaning there isn't this or that feature and it is available with xyz forum.

The staff can't respond to everything or they would have no time to develop anything. It has kind of fallen to Colin S. to take on the role of chief responder on issues like this.

You need to understand that all of us want our forums tweaked one way or another, and we all use the forums differently. So IPS can't ever please all the masses and all their customers.

I really think the share icon using a FB account is your best interim solution. Perhaps there is a 3rd-party developer who could create a custom solution for you.

I know, not what you wanted to hear but ... just some commentary from a community lurker.

Share icon doesn't really help me since I need to enter all recipients manually in case of email, and facebook doesn't give me an option to set a private account that only members can see. twitter does work, but not all members have twitter. Again, I'm looking for a very basic feature that most forums that I checked have.

okay, well then you need to have a mass pm icon added to your share for topics, and tweak that to send to entire group. that is totally a 3rd-party developer that has to create that.