Fix email notifications

Bugmaster · Post by **Bugmaster** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 12:01 am

When I get email notifications from the forum, they come in some sort of an escaped C format. F.ex.:

&#91;quote&#58;2debc073eb=\"nikolayevich\"&#93;  &#91;quote&#58;2debc073eb=\"ShieldAxe\"&#93;So is the moral code in the bible the absolute code or a temporary set given by god?  And the absolute code must be something we cannot decipher?  Regarding the moral code given in the bible, many parts which are now considered immoral used to be moral and others no longer immoral when they were immoral before.  If this code was temporary, does that mean morals changed or the old code was immoral?  &#91;/quote&#58;2debc073eb&#93;

This is getting kinda annoying now, when I find myself having to rely on the notifications more heavily. Sending them in HTML, or plaintext, would be much more preferable.

Post by **otseng** » Wed Nov 02, 2005 8:29 pm

It's getting sent as bbcoded text. I don't know of any mods that can send them as html. But, if one is available, I am willing to try it out.

The email should be used to just get some idea of what someone replied with, rather than being used to fully understand the reply. The email will contain a link to that post and should be used to read the post from the forum itself.

Bugmaster · Post by **Bugmaster** » Thu Nov 03, 2005 2:51 am

otseng wrote:The email will contain a link to that post and should be used to read the post from the forum itself.

Yeah, I understand that's what it's for. Still, at some point it would be nice to have a feature where it sends you a human-readable email with the entire post in it -- I would actually prefer plain text over HTML.

I often read the email notifications over lunch at work, or on my PDA; it lets me think about what I want to say before I go home, click that link, and say it. Plaintext notifications would be great for these kinds of use cases; but then again, I'm probably the only one on this forum crazy enough to follow debates on the go :-)

Post by **otseng** » Thu Nov 03, 2005 6:56 am

Bugmaster wrote:Still, at some point it would be nice to have a feature where it sends you a human-readable email with the entire post in it -- I would actually prefer plain text over HTML.

I wish there was a way to convert bbcode to a plain text readable format. In particular, the quotes is a problem.

I had also tried playing around with a mod with downloading the entire thread as html, but I having several problems with it. One, some people were experiencing paging problems while reading the thread normally. Second, it was blowing up MySQL on large threads.

QED · Post by **QED** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 9:41 am

One other issue with email notification: every new post in a "watched topic" generates its own notification so that a busy topic might deliver a dozen separate mails from one day to the next. I wonder if there is any mod to restrict the notifications to the initial unread post? I've experienced this on other boards and it does saves a lot of sorting and deleting.

Bugmaster · Post by **Bugmaster** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 1:09 pm

Actually, I've experienced the opposite behavior: my mail notifications just get eaten sometimes. Maybe it's just my mail server being stupid, I don't know.

Post by **otseng** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 9:50 am

QED wrote:I wonder if there is any mod to restrict the notifications to the initial unread post? I've experienced this on other boards and it does saves a lot of sorting and deleting.

I don't know of any mod that does this, but I've posted a request for one.

But, one mod that I do have installed is email digests that can send you a single email for subforums that you select.