yahoogroups style email push function: Questions

[chrisyeo]

Hi. I heard from at least one other person that a yahoogroups style email function is still desirable, where the daily posts, or summary of posts are emailed to member's mailboxes.

This is because most people are simply too busy to 'surf' through this forum regularly.

Because of this, I believe that this forum may not be as 'important' to some people as yahoogroups used to be.

Therefore, I would like to ask some questions:

1. Do people really want such a function? Do speak up if you do.
2. How beneficial would such a function be?

To the admin:
3. Is it technically feasible?
4. How troublesome will it be to implement?

I hope that some discussion will be generated over this.

Clear skies!
Chris

[Airconvent]

Hi. I heard from at least one other person that a yahoogroups style email function is still desirable, where the daily posts, or summary of posts are emailed to member's mailboxes.

This is because most people are simply too busy to 'surf' through this forum regularly.

Because of this, I believe that this forum may not be as 'important' to some people as yahoogroups used to be.

Therefore, I would like to ask some questions:

1. Do people really want such a function? Do speak up if you do.
2. How beneficial would such a function be?

To the admin:
3. Is it technically feasible?
4. How troublesome will it be to implement?

I hope that some discussion will be generated over this.

Clear skies!
Chris

hi chris,
it was discussed when the forum first appeared. too much work would be required to make it work...that was why at the time, it was presented that those who prefer the push method should continue to use yahoogroups while those who like forums will lurk here.
the forums offers several advantages, though:

Ability to edit your own post
Info on which messages posted today and yesterday, so you don't waste time looking at read messages.

rich

[VinSnr]

Hi. I heard from at least one other person that a yahoogroups style email function is still desirable, where the daily posts, or summary of posts are emailed to member's mailboxes.

This is because most people are simply too busy to 'surf' through this forum regularly.

Because of this, I believe that this forum may not be as 'important' to some people as yahoogroups used to be.

Therefore, I would like to ask some questions:

1. Do people really want such a function? Do speak up if you do.
2. How beneficial would such a function be?

To the admin:
3. Is it technically feasible?
4. How troublesome will it be to implement?

I hope that some discussion will be generated over this.

Clear skies!
Chris

I mentioned before....to have this function in a forum is almost close to asking for a suicide. Now we may have about 20 ++ new post everyday. When you have about 50++ new post everyday, do you think anyone would want to recieve 50 over emails just from this forum board alone? ( I am being conservative. My own forum board over at HardwareZoom generates about 100-200 over post a day)

In fact even for yahoogroups, I have switched off "no emails" in a few high traffic groups such as digital-astro and Lxd55. This two group can generate about 50 emails everyday. I find that I deleted most of them because I have no interest in their discussions. So in the end, I go for "no email" function.

Same with the forum. No point building something only to know that no one is going to use it once the forum gets popular.

[chrisyeo]

I have thought about that before, and I think it might be possible to send emails with only the titles and perhaps only the first few lines of the post. That might get around the problem.

Any summary at all might be preferable to having to check the site regularly.

Also, it is not clear to me that it will be very troublesome to implement. If we have the capacity to subscribe to threads, it might be possible to just push the posts along with the same email.

Clear skies.
Chris

[VinSnr]

I have thought about that before, and I think it might be possible to send emails with only the titles and perhaps only the first few lines of the post. That might get around the problem.

Any summary at all might be preferable to having to check the site regularly.

Also, it is not clear to me that it will be very troublesome to implement. If we have the capacity to subscribe to threads, it might be possible to just push the posts along with the same email.

Clear skies.
Chris

umm..the above sounds good. Maybe not every single post as an email, but maybe an email digest for every 10-20 post with just the titles. When they click on the titles, the link will bring them to the right thread in this forum...

It's not too diffiuclt to do this using PHP, but Yong Quan will need to look into the forum source code and modify accordingly. It will take him some time to understand the source code.

Alternative, there might be "plug-ins" for this function. If there is, it should be easier to implement.

Yong Quan, what do you think about this?

[nF]

As you can see if you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can see a link called "Watch this topic for replies" in Bold. It gives you the ability to subscribe to that particular topic for any further posts been posted meaning that any for any new posts, it will be email to you. Please explore the page before posting. Thanks.

Regards,
Tan Yong Quan

[acc]

Lets consider this matter closed. Until we hear directly from those people who lurk in the background lamenting about the lack of an email puch function, I can only assume that the demand is not there; If they exist, then I really don't understand why those people can't speak up for themselves.

There is already a link on the forums home page to a handy table that summaries all the new posts since the last log-in. This is a very convenient feature, so do make use of it.

cheers
chee chien

p/s: we can't please everybody.