Did you know?

[Day_]

For those that have iPhones you will be aware of the tips app that is pre installed, when you’ve setup your shiny new phone you receive occasional notifications on how to use the phone.

Wouldn’t it be nice if IPS had a similar system for the forums now that FAQ pages are a thing of the past, we just expect users to know how to use the forum. What about forum virgins dipping their toes into online communities for the first time?

When new members register, for the first week, two or month they receive tips in their notifications.....

Did you know you could mention other users by typing @ followed by the users name?

Did you know, if you highlight text you wish to quote?

Did you know you could upload your own photo?

Did you know pressing the dot next to the topic title takes you to the first unread post?

You get the idea right. 

It would be great for existing users to also receive these tips for the same period if this feature was added.

There would be a bunch of default tips setup in the admin panel, but you would have the ability to add your own or disable some of the default tips.

The user could quickly turn these off in his/her settings if they don’t want to receive them.

If this is possible or not I don’t know, that’s for the developers to decide, I’m just here with the bright ideas which I believe this is a great one.

I see so many people on Facebook, Twitter and my own forum discover things that I think are basic features years after having an account, as owners and software  developers we probably all don’t do enough to help ease new users to forums.

One of my biggest pet hates of this software is the clicking of the dot to be taken to the first unread posts, the developers believe this is great as it is, but a user who only accesses the internet on mobile device and new to forums, does not have the ability to hover a finger over and see the tooltip which says go to unread posts. The tips notification would educate them on this.

Other than being technically impossible, I see no reason why this would not be great for all forums and a great way to help users understand how to use our sites better.

Matt, Brandon, Lindy, I won’t tag you but if one of you sees this and thinks that’s a bloody good idea, don’t leave me hanging, this is probably the longest post I’ve made the effort to post on here 😂

[opentype]

I was doing that for some time. I just added the questions/tips to a Pages database and let one show randomly at a time in the sidebar of the discovery page. 

I also had the dot/star tip you mentioned in there, but I removed it. My activity feeds either show all posts or the topic with links sets to “first unread” in the stream settings. So no one needs to click on the dot/star. It’s not an issue anymore. 

[Day_]

3 minutes ago, opentype said:

I was doing that for some time. I just added the questions/tips to a Pages database and let one show randomly at a time in the sidebar of the discovery page. 

I also had the dot/star tip you mentioned in there, but I removed it. My activity feeds either show all posts or the topic with links sets to “first unread” in the stream settings. So no one needs to click on the dot/star. It’s not an issue anymore. 

I like that, although I don’t have pages myself or a sidebar. 

The dot/star tip doesn’t really effect my site anymore as I’ve tinkered with the templates and clicking the topic title automatically takes you to the first unread, was thinking of the wider usage of sites. 

I know the activity feeds have this as an option but if you navigate through individual forums rather than use the activity stream by default you need to click the dot.

I’m sure having this as a tip for those who are not comfortable editing templates or playing around with pages would benefit from tips being built into the notification system.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

Actually, this is very simple to do with some template logic and a little bit of PHP - no Pages needed (though it gets easier if you do have Pages, because you have a lot more options).

{{$tips = array( 'You can use the @ symbol to mention other members in a post.', 'If you hover over a members name, you can see a brief overview of their profile.', 'A star marked on a topic means that you have already participated in that topic.' );}}
<p class='ipsMessage ipsMessage_info'>Did you know: {expression="$tips[ array_rand( $tips ) ]"}</p>

I plugged this into the forums/index/index template just above the <section> tag:

[Day_]

16 minutes ago, Ryan Ashbrook said:

Actually, this is very simple to do with some template logic and a little bit of PHP - no Pages needed (though it gets easier if you do have Pages, because you have a lot more options).

{{$tips = array( 'You can use the @ symbol to mention other members in a post.', 'If you hover over a members name, you can see a brief overview of their profile.', 'A star marked on a topic means that you have already participated in that topic.' );}}
<p class='ipsMessage ipsMessage_info'>Did you know: {expression="$tips[ array_rand( $tips ) ]"}</p>

I plugged this into the forums/index/index template just above the <section> tag:

The problem with this is it only covers one tip and remains on view to all members until removed from the template.

I think there is a wide range of tips, not just how to access unread posts that could be displayed to new users on sign up. Users would be notified with one on each daily login for example, either in th notification area or as you have shown above but dismissible.

[Fosters]

I know that some clients are using our notices app to show such stuff on specific sites to their members https://invisioncommunity.com/files/file/8691-notices/

[Joel R]

You can also use Custom Notifications by @Fosters which I've used before to send out community  wide updates announcing new festures. 

I was recently most impressed with the Discourse chat box.  It's an interactive system in PM where you "chat" with a bot, who teaches you things like mentions, quotes and attachments.  You learn how to use the editor.