BuddyPress.org

Ok, obviously there are the possibilitiy of information overflow, but that does not mean you shouldn´t have the option of turning notifications on. In Cartwrights plugin you can choose what you want the users to be notified of. For some bbpress installations, being notified of e.g. forum replies to a topic you started, is feasible – for larger ones they may not be.

Let´s take facebook as an example:

You don´t get notified of every wallpost in a group. Why not? Because you would have 200 new notifications every day if you are a member of a popular group.

But you do get notified if a friends comments on your wall, or if someone comments on a post that you also commented on. This keeps the conversation going and is a good way of keeping up with things you find interesting etc.

Apparantly, notifcations in the buddybar can be done with a plugin, since Andy has made it possible for plugins to plug in to the notifications area. In light of this information I am not advocating this having to be in core. If it where to be in core, I can understand only wanting the notifications to be “citical only”. But as a plugin I don´t see a problem with having the option to allow notifications of comment replies, forum replies etc. An option regarding forum replies could be to have a “do not notify me of furter updates” link if you are not interested in the forumpost anymore.

There is always a fine line with giving people enough info and too much info, but I suggest that it should be up to each admin to decide what works best for his community.

Any more thoughts?

@jfigura – thanks for the tip about avoiding WPMU DEV templates, lol.

Re: too many quirky things in BP – I’ve found that a software program is ‘nothing but’ a bunch of quirky things. But it sure would be great if some brilliant programmer could create a plugin to solve this issue – I would certainly DONATE!

@Peter – you are definitely right about the trend to store sign-up email password notifications – In fact, I have a folder in my Gmail labelled ‘passwords’ full of logins including the one for Buddypress and WPMU! (I’d be resetting my password everyday if I didn’t)

@Mike – I would be willing to live with the current BP password situation because I sometimes forget (or delete) my own passwords and need to reset them and never even bother creating a password I can remember.

Where I’m at now, is trying to figure out how the frig to change the message from WPMU so I can eliminate the password that does not work (it actually sends the correct username).

I tried changing the text in the WPMU Admin panel, but this seems to have no effect at all – So I’m posting at the WPMU forum trying to find out which file to change.

Any ideas would be welcome : )

Hi Paul,

The full code is in this (small) plugin here:

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-group-activity-stream-subscription/

The url is created with the following code:

class Group_Activity_Subscription extends BP_Group_Extension {



function group_activity_subscription() {

global $bp;



$this->name = 'Notifications';

$this->slug = 'notifications';



// Only enable the notifications nav item if the user is a member of the group

if ( groups_is_user_member( $bp->loggedin_user->id , $bp->groups->current_group->id )  ) {

$this->enable_nav_item = true;

} else {

$this->enable_nav_item = false;

}



$this->nav_item_position = 91;



$this->enable_create_step = false;

$this->enable_edit_item  = false;



add_action ( 'wp_print_styles' , array( &$this , 'add_settings_stylesheet' ) );



}

Hi,

But that plugin only emails the stream notification. I want the option to email users as a standalone feature or may be I can adapt from that plugin.

Will have to check it now. Thanks!

Hi there. Thanks for the feedback

1. That is correct, yes. I have a few plans to streamline this a bit/make it more user-friendly.

2. Something I’ve missed. I’ll add support for removing elements

3. “added something new to the group” is just what I chose as a general catch-all in the case of the plugin running into an activity type that it doesn’t recognise. Will make this more obvious and customisable.

4. That should indeed mean no delay. I’ll double-check this and update the wording.

5. Good point again. I originally made this with hardcoded support for my groupwiki plugin. I’ll get rid of this.

6. It isn’t at the moment but this is also on the list of things that i want to get in there asap. I’ll let you know as soon as I can get it sorted (shouldn’t be too hard as there isn’t *that* much text in there)

Thanks again. I’ll check out your site later today

Still not working. I did find the filter itself in the file /plugins/buddypress/bp-core/bp-core-activation.php:

add_filter( ‘wpmu_welcome_user_notification’, ‘bp_core_disable_welcome_email’ );

I suppose I could just delete that line to remove the filter, but then every time BP is updated it’ll probably get overwritten and I’ll forget all about it. Not sure why your filter hook didn’t work. Any ideas?

Thanks a million for your help — I really appreciate it.

okay, tried adding our mailserver info and user login and password and changed the port in the file class-pop3.php in wp-includes.

sent a bunch of messages, using different configuration.

nothing solves the default server from line.

looking at the wpmu forum per DJPaul’s recommendation. I had found a plugin there and tried to install it – didn’t work. Looking again.

Perhaps a clue – in looking at WP Mail, it references a file called class-pop3.php. In that file, I see that the $MAILSERVER = ‘ ‘

and the $user and $pass are both ‘ ‘

assuming that the email specified in admin panel of wpmu general->settings is reliable for the email, perhaps I just need to fill in those data.

awaiting word from my hosting service for their opinion.

if it is true, was this an upgrade or installation problem that the system does not query these critical pieces of data? I seem to be the only one with this problem or who cares about it in terms of wanting to change the sender email address.

perhaps something to add to the configuration and installation setup guide?

@mikepratt

I was originally going to make use of one of the forum subscription plugins but our students have requested to be “spammed to death” with updates regarding their collaborative group work – much like facebook. Of course, now that they have got their wish they realise that receiving a huge raft of emails regarding your work each day isn’t quite as fun as hearing about what your friends did on facebook…

I’ve posted an update on where I’m at with the plugin and what I’m planning to implement before release this weekend. The link is below but I’ll also cut+paste the content as it’s probably going to get more people reading it if it’s on here rather than my small dev site.

Update:

Current bugs fixed. Will be adding the following requested features in the next couple of days with planned release on fri/sat/sun:

1) User’s have to be registered X amount of time for their activites to email people. Warning about this in the notifications screen. Amount of time defaults to 1 week but controllable in wp-admin backend.

2) Mention of the need to check these notification settings in the sidewide notifications area. Perhaps a list of links to the group notification settings for each group the user is a member of too.

3) Default behaviour for the plugin will be for activity updates to be off or at least infrequent. This default behaviour controllable by wp-admin backend.

4) Possibly change all notification settings to be time based as per the current group wiki edit ones

5) Enable group admins + mods to send out a group update that overrides group user settings in regards to not receiving updates. This will be done by ticking a box on the update screen, an extra “what’s new” bit in the group notifications area or a screen in the group admin area.

6) Finish the implementation to allow plugin authors to add their own action type handling

The aims of these changes are:

1) Keep the interface as simple as possible for all the site users

2) Have default behaviour that isn’t too spammy

Possible future updates:

Ability for users to have update ‘digests’ received at a specified time daily. Allowing users to choose the time they receive the update should help spread server load.

http://namoo.co.uk/blog/2010/02/01/group-activity-stream-email-notifications/#comment-11

Thanks, r-a-y,

Basically what r-a-y has said is completely correct. It hooks into the action for recording an activity and then emails everyone in the group with a notification of the activity. The idea of this is that it can catch pretty much anything related to a group – so forums, ‘wire posts’, group joins, wiki edits, etc can all be included. By default it will support the buddypress basic functions + our groupwiki functions but I’m also trying to build in an easy way for people to extend this to support their own plugins with just a small amount of additional code to their plugin file.

Even without building in specific support for a plugin this will grab an activity update for a group and email it out, with a generic description for the activity type rather than something specific.

The feedback I’ve had so far suggests that users want a bit more control over default behviour/settings of the plugin and for a way for group admins/mods to post ‘must have’ alerts. I’m hoping to add this in the next couple of days and get the plugin out by Friday or some point over the weekend.