Thanks for your feedback, @backpackersunion. I’ll let others chime in as I spent a long time working on the email feature, so it’s close to my heart, but here’s my thoughts:
- Decisions, not options.
- It’s much easier to add options than it is to remove options.
- It’s risky to add options or features unless you’re sure what your users want, so launching with a minimal feature set and listening to feedback and consensus helps us make informed decisions.
And the template, yes — you run the risk of the template going out-of-sync with the version distributed by BuddyPress. But this isn’t specific to the email feature, and could apply to any of BuddyPress thirty or so other templates.
We have some plans to add some communication around template changes in a feature release, like WooCommerce apparently does, which will help a bit.
Hi @djpaul
The “Decisions, not options”, is really helpful and makes perfect sense. Ultimately I think you’re right that feedback will be the key.
From a UI standpoint, it currently looks like you’re giving the admin Options, but then making the Decisions (Excluding the header, ‘Site Name’).
Examples:
1. The codex says, “…site administrators can easily edit the contents of email notifications… use(ing) ‘tokens,’ which are generic placeholders…”. “Hi {{recipient.name}}”: is in the content of the email and is a token, so where can I edit it?
2. There is a footer text box option and an “unsubscribe” token. So, I have the option of adding the unsubscribe link in the footer, but not the decision (See Screen Shot).
Ultimately, this is an awesome addition to BP and you’ve done a great job with it! Hopefully my feedback is helpful, but let me know if there is any other ways I can help.
Thanks again Paul!
Hi @djpaul
I wanted to follow up on the unsubscribe link and see if you were able to catch this screen shot (The link had disconnected in the above comment) and if you had any thoughts/ideas?
I want to move away from an ’email plugin’ solution for the new email feature because I think it’s the future, but I’m fighting like crazy to avoid another child theme template for such a small tweak.
Has anyone else expressed interest in being able to customize the link and do you think the screen shot above is a viable solution?
Thanks Paul!
@backpackersunion Some have asked about the “Hi” part. I suppose that could be changed. I have seen a few people ask, but if I see one post about something here, I normally multiple that number by 100, because very few people find it easy or convenient to get in contact with us (with support question), so probably quite a lot of people would like the option, even if it wasn’t the majority.
The unsubscribe I am a bit less sure of. I don’t want to make it easy for evil people running BP to remove the unsubscribe link for emails they send. In BuddyPress 2.6, an upcoming change means that this unsubscribe link will work, even if you’re not logged in to the site.
From a technical perspective, if we remove the token from the template and put it into the option, if a user has already customised the footer text option, they won’t see the new updated (default value for the) option.
This is not unsolvable, we’d run something on the upgrade routing, but we’d have to stick the token at the very bottom or top of the template. It’d be easy for the site admin to change, but it would annoy them. But it might be worthwhile.
So — maybe? You could create a ticket on buddypress.trac.wordpress.org to see if any other regular contributor likes the idea, or see if you can start a discussion or get feedback from other users via the forum.
Thanks @djpaul !
Evil people do suck! But I think I see where you’re coming from: The unsubscribe fixture is more of an anti-spamming measure?
I did try navigating the Trac system to further the discussion but came into a few hangups relating to a “TICKET_CREATE privileges are required…” error. But I’ll keep on this topic because I think it’s an important one, especially with the quantity of emails BP outputs and dependency we have on them for notifications.
With the release of 2.6, will the Unsubscribe link automatically disable all BP notifications when clicked or just the notification related to that email (i.e. All Activity, Messages, Friends Notifications or just the single related notification) or something different (i.e. option landing page)?
