 Subscription feature improvements [message #10502] |
Tue, 03 June 2003 01:07  |
mal0rd
Messages: 17
Registered: May 2003
Karma: 0
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Junior Member |
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Hi.
A little introduction
I discovered FUD Forum a short while ago and I love the feel. It's quite powerful and also user friendly enough. I was using Sympa, but that has an awkward registration system that the computationally-challenged can stumble over. I submitted a patch to smooth over the process a little, but they never got back to me on it, and I want to use a vanilla, prepackaged Forum.
The Issue
I feel the email integration features of FUD Forum are a little to hard to use for the user. Notably, if one wants to receive new messages via email they need to register with an external MLM (Mailing List Manager) in addition to FUD. I propose the following:
<ol type="1">
[*]There should be another level of subscription to the forum. Next to the little "subscribe" link there should be a "completely subscribe" link. When a user is completely subscribed they will receive every new message posted to the forum.
[*]The notifications sent for subscriptions to forums and topics should be formatted like mailing list emails. i.e. they should contain the following (example) headers:
[*]The notifications should have as Reply-To and From email headers an address in the "Mailing List Email" entry of the MLM section of the control panel.
[*]When registering a new account, the user should be asked which forums they want to "Completely Subscribe" to.
[/LIST] ( <- Does FUDcode support nested lists? Is this a bug? )
With these modifications a user can treat the "Complete Subscription" just like a mailing list. Only a procmail filter line must be added: no external MLM is needed. I feel this is a set in the right direction for Internet communities: a forum that can feel like a Mailing List.
If you would accept the patch I could try to do some hacking towards this idea myself, but I don't want to do the work if only I can benefit from it.
If you don't like this idea, another alternative that would suit my needs is making it easy for a user to register/unregister for a corresponding mailing list of a forum. This could be accomplished if an "Announcement Message" could contain pseduo-markup like [USERS EMAIL]. Then a link to an external script could be created that would register/unregister the user from a Mailing List. The link would look like: <a href="http://fud.prohost.org/mlm/register.php?email=[USERS EMAIL]">start receiving all messages as email</a>. This means I would need to set up an external MLM though, which I'd rather not do.
I think that the convenience associated with a mailing list should be made more user friendly to utilize. These seemingly unobtrusive changes would give FUD Forum the best of both worlds. Please tell me what you think.
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| Re: Subscription feature improvements [message #10525 is a reply to message #10513] |
Tue, 03 June 2003 21:14  |
mal0rd
Messages: 17
Registered: May 2003
Karma: 0
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Junior Member |
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Ok, I understand that you don't want FUD to become a MLM. Traditional MLM's are lacking of user-friendly-ness, so I don't want that either. That is really what I'm after: I want a medium of discussion that's easy for people who don't use computers much to utilize.
I suppose I can live without the ability to post messages via email. That means I don't need some of the extra headers I described or the change in the From header for the notifications.
The convenient feature of mailing lists I want is to have every message sent to the users via email. This is important because I don't except people to regally check the forum and I don't want to require my users to have to, except to post. So here is my new simplified proposal:
- Instead of having a little "Subscribe" as a link above the forum, have a little "Subscribe to notifications" link, which would do what "Subscribe" does now, and a larger "Subscribe to messages" link, which would send them all the messages posted to the forum.
- Have the "Subscribe to messages" link available even if the user isn't logged in. After clicking on it they would be asked to register/login like when one clicks "new topic" now. This would simplify things so I can say to new users "Go to http://fud.prohost.org/forum/index.php?t=thread&frm_id=1 and click Subscribe to Messages, then follow the directions." That would be simple enough for even novice computer users. Every extra step I need to tell people (like "register first") will result in a few more requests for support I need to answer.
- The emails sent to the user when they are "Subscribed to messages" should have enough header information so an email client can correctly thread the message (like References and In-Reply-To) . The subject of the email should also be formatted like a mailing list. Instead of "New reply to testpost2 by testuser" it should be like "[FORUM SHORT NAME] Re: [TOPIC]". It would be nice if it also contained a "Unsubscribe to Messages" link.
I hope this new set of suggestions wouldn't damage FUD's identity as a Forum and not a MLM too much.  But if this is still too much to ask then I could live with just points 1 and 2. I don't really like MLM's too much: that's why I'm trying to use FUD. But I do like everything coming to me in my mailbox with nice headers so I don't have to spend time visiting every forum I belong to. I think MLM and FUD integration is overkill: but adding just these few features would be helpful and shouldn't bother people that don't use them.
Could you please tell me what you think? Remember, I can probably do most of the hacking myself, I just don't want to spend the time if you won't accept the changed.
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| Re: Subscription feature improvements [message #10529 is a reply to message #10525] |
Tue, 03 June 2003 21:50 |
Ilia
Messages: 13241
Registered: January 2002
Karma: 0
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Senior Member
Administrator
Core Developer |
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Actually, you can post messages via e-mail to FUDforum. It works by the same mechanism that import mailing list messages, just setup a procmail rule to forward e-mails to FUDforum's import script...
I am somewhat reluctant to have 2 very similarly worded subscribe links as that will cause immense amount of confusion to many users. Many of FUDforum users are not very computer savy and any lack of clarity will cause them problems.
As for subscribing unregistered users, that's a pain and possible security hole. Consider to subscribe a user needs to provide an e-mail, to avoid having people subscribe other people we'd need to have some sort of validation mechanism. Which brings us back to register form, which really requires only 3 other pieces of info, name, login and a password. I suppose you could make a copy of register form without any of the optional fields and use that as subscribe form.
I do agree that adding some sort of a header to indicate the source forum would be useful and I'll look into adding that.
Current e-mails sent by the forum already contain the un-subscribe link.
FUDforum Core Developer
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| Re: Subscription feature improvements [message #10530 is a reply to message #10529] |
Tue, 03 June 2003 22:53 |
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Anonymous
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| prottoss wrote on Tue, 03 June 2003 17:50 |
Actually, you can post messages via e-mail to FUDforum. It works by the same mechanism that import mailing list messages, just setup a procmail rule to forward e-mails to FUDforum's import script...
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I'm aware of that. But it can't happen just by replying to a notification message, like in a ML. I'm saying it's OK the way it is.
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I am somewhat reluctant to have 2 very similarly worded subscribe links as that will cause immense amount of confusion to many users. Many of FUDforum users are not very computer savy and any lack of clarity will cause them problems.
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I agree. We want the interface as intuitive as possible. I'll work on the wording of the subscribe links. But if I come up with good wording then can I get my second subscribe link?
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As for subscribing unregistered users, that's a pain and possible security hole.
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Actually I was suggesting when the unregistered user clicked on the "subscribe to messages" button it would act like when a user clicks on the "new topic" button, i.e. it would ask them to login or register.
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I suppose you could make a copy of register form without any of the optional fields and use that as subscribe form.
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That would be even better, because it would make it simpler for the non-computer savy.
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I do agree that adding some sort of a header to indicate the source forum would be useful and I'll look into adding that.
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Great. It would be best if it was compact to, like a ML header. Because for viewing a discussion in a email client one doesn't need a verbose header. Then again, a verbose header like you have now is a bit more user friendly. Can I also get the additional header In-Reply-To?
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Current e-mails sent by the forum already contain the un-subscribe link.
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I don't think it was in the same spot (above the message) when the message is sent in HTML format. If it is, sorry, I must have missed it.
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| Re: Subscription feature improvements [message #10532 is a reply to message #10530] |
Wed, 04 June 2003 00:17 |
Ilia
Messages: 13241
Registered: January 2002
Karma: 0
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Senior Member
Administrator
Core Developer |
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Adding In-Reply-To header is a bit tricky, since it'll require me to store keep track of a number of values I do not need to and pass them around to the emailing function.
But, once I get to adding the forum's name it may become possible, but for now no promises.
FUDforum Core Developer
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