Kunena 6.2.5 & module Kunena Latest 6.0.7 released

The Kunena team has announce the arrival of Kunena 6.2.5 [K 6.2.5] which is now available for download as a native Joomla extension for J! 4.3.x/4.4.x/5.0.x. This version addresses most of the issues that were discovered in K 6.1 / K 6.2 and issues discovered during the last development stages of K 6.2

Question Automatic subscriptions

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9 years 10 months ago #1 by sozzled

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Introduction

Automatic subscriptions—the ability to enforce a website owner's policy that all members of the site "automatically" receive email notifications whenever there is some new forum activity (a new topic created or replies made to existing topics)—is a subject that has often been discussed on this forum going back as far as I can remember. People have asked for the Kunena project team to deliver features that allow them to "autosubscribe" members of their forums to categories and topics without their members having to do anything except to join their websites. This is a subject that has as many different views about how to implement a solution as well as different opinions about whether such methods are "legitimate", workable, worthy or legal in terms of the protection of an individual's right to privacy or an individual's right to choose.

The different views and opinions expressed by the wider Kunena community exist within the Kunena project team, too. In short, there is no simple answer to this very complex issue.

Every website on the internet is a business in some form or another. Some websites operate in order to generate a cash profit while others operate on a not-for-profit basis—to facilitate sharing of knowledge, community or social activities. Your website provides a service as part of that business and the people who join your site are consumers of that service (or services) that you offer. A forum is part of that business and your members' participation in the forum acts both to give them the means to discuss the range of "services" that your site provides—that is, something that your members consume—as well as where your members contribute to enhance the business of the site.

It really does not matter for what purpose your site exists. As soon as we start talking about sending out emails to people we're talking about how your website operates as a business and, as part of operating that business, questions about how you manage the relationship between you and your "customers" are entirely relevant.

This article identifies the technical and non-technical complexities that people need to understand before you try to "autosubscribe" your members when they did not specifically and explicitly choose to subscribe themselves to your forum. The issues fall into the following broad categories:

  • Feasibility: can it be done?
  • Design: how can it be done?
  • Viability: will it work?
  • Risk management: costs, overheads, ethical and legal consequences.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are my own and do not represent the opinion of the project team as a whole or, necessarily, the opinions of individual members of the team.

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9 years 10 months ago - 9 years 10 months ago #2 by MarioMari
Hi!

[...] This is a subject that has as many different views about how to implement a solution as well as different opinions about whether such methods are "legitimate", workable, worthy or legal in terms of the protection of an individual's right to privacy or an individual's right to choose. [...]


— Thank you for the article and a serious approach to the subject. Give someone a hammer, one builds a house, the second kills a man. You can not affect the use of tools.

Kunena, should offer superlative and effective solutions. Without this, there will be the leader. If you do not strive to be a leader to date the work will be thrown into the trash.

Joomla 2.5.8, and 3.0 K.2.0.3, default Chrome
Last edit: 9 years 10 months ago by MarioMari.

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9 years 10 months ago #3 by MarioMari
Replied by MarioMari on topic Automatic subscriptions
Kunena must develop. :) If you think someone will think Kunena forum.

Maybe the idea is to create a ranking of new features Kuenne that after reaching some number of votes will be considered a priority in the work of the Forum?

Perhaps this type of tool?
helpocean.com/
Or a plugin for Kunena who will vote and count the votes on a specific topic in the "New Features"?

Joomla 2.5.8, and 3.0 K.2.0.3, default Chrome

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9 years 10 months ago #4 by PopleMediaSolutions
Hi All,

Just wondering if you can help me with this the following:

We have a customer who is using the Kunena forum and community builder (with CBsubs) to allow access to the forum. Upon registering they would like all users to be automatically subscribed not only to all categories but all topics as well.

Can you help me with this?

Thanks.

Rowan
Pople Media Solutions

Rowan
Pople Media Solutions

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9 years 9 months ago #5 by PopleMediaSolutions
Great post!
Thanks for this - I totally understand. I have managed, with this, to persuade them against the automatic subscription.

Thanks!

Rowan
Pople Media Solutions

Rowan
Pople Media Solutions

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9 years 8 months ago #6 by sozzled
Replied by sozzled on topic Automatic subscriptions
Thank you to everyone who has read this topic and replied. :)

I would like to remind people who are contemplating "autosubscriptions" - remembering that there is no built-in mechanism in Kunena to automatically subscribe all of your users to a topics/categories on your forum - of the point I made in the article:

Additionally, generating email increases the workload on your server and may, over time, impact on the performance of your site particularly if your forum is busy and emails are sent to many subscribed members every time a new topic is created or a topic is replied to.


If your forum generates a lot of email every time your users post messages on the forum we are aware that forum performance will be affected because of the background tasks involved in sending the emails.

There may also be some confusion about what "autosubscriptions" means. The term does not mean, for example, that if you set the configuration setting

Users » Subscriptions » Topic Subscriptions = Email every update

that all of your users will receive email every time a new message is posted on your forum. This setting only applies to those users who are subscribed to topics where new messages are posted. In other words, if a new message is posted on your forum, only subscribed members will receive email and, by the way, the author of the message will not receive an email notifying them of the message that they just posted.

I hope this added explanation helps.

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9 years 5 months ago - 9 years 5 months ago #7 by thepiston
Replied by thepiston on topic Automatic subscriptions
What's best way to mass subscribe a bunch of users to a forum? I can easily get an ID list too and do it in phpmyadmin if anyone knows the syntax to do that in one query.

thanks
Last edit: 9 years 5 months ago by thepiston.

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6 years 1 month ago #8 by Boby71
Replied by Boby71 on topic Automatic subscriptions
Well, I'm running a small online community (=no problems with workload & staff) and lately we started to switch over to using Facebook groups, because people WANT to get a notification of EVERYTHING. That's what they are trained to by various social media channels. Unfortunately, our online community isn't being used anymore because of this missing feature.

Wake up, Kunena - it's time to adapt or forums will be completely gone soon; this is 2018!

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