We’ve recently had a few people ask on the MyBB Community Forums how they can subscribe to a thread they reply to but not receive email notifications of new replies. They didn’t realise that we already had this functionality – you can add threads to a “favourites list”.
Why didn’t they realise this? The two leading commercial bulletin boards, vBulletin and Invision Power Board have both set the standard in user expectations on how features should work. Both of these commercial and highly popular bulletin board scripts allow users to add threads to their subscriptions list without receiving email notifications.
This creates a bit of a problem for us in MyBB as we’ve got this feature – favourite threads, which nobody actually uses or knows what it does because most are used to the ability to subscribe to a thread and elect to receive no email notifications of new replies.
In an attempt to “normalise” the front end functionality between bulletin boards, MyBB 1.4 now adopts a similar approach – we’ve completely scrapped the separate interface for favourite threads and merged the functionality in to the subscriptions system. This isn’t about us copying x or y, it’s about us bringing an interface to MyBB which hopefully brings some sort of small amount standardisation to the market.
People usually visit several different forums on the internet and interact with each of them. They’re most probably powered by several different forum scripts too and the problem with this is that usually features are worded differently or behave differently between these applications and uses do get lost and don’t know how to perform a task they can on another board. We need to help with this in some cases so we can provide a better experience for your users.
To explain a little better, the new subscriptions system has the following functionality:
- When registering or editing their profile, users can select their default thread subscription method: Do not subscribe to threads, subscribe to threads but don’t send notification emails or subscribe to threads and receive instant notification emails.
- Users can select which type of notification they want when making a new thread or posting a reply - the same options as above.
- When clicking the “Subscribe to thread” link in threads, users are presented with a screen allowing them to choose how they’d like to be notified of new replies (not at all or instant notification)
- The subscriptions page now lists all subscriptions, you’re notification method for new replies and looks similar to the standard thread listing pages.
The options you’re shown when subscribing to a thread from the show thread page.
Your subscriptions list - looking similar to the thread listing & containing checkboxes to manage the subscriptions.
Comments
Bobby (March 5th, 2007, 9:46 pm)
Very nice! I like how 1.4 is progressing in terms of ’smartness’ and user-bility. And your definitely right, its not about copying x or y (See: Crazy About Ideas) but by incorporating what the mass market wants - plugins are used for the individual market.
Now that we have a ‘better’ subscription system, will we be seeing a Digest option? And with favourites in mind, will there be a revamp of the ratings system to better categorise those threads which are of higher quality than others? Will we be seeing a customised ‘May Be Interested’ section? (OH! Such good Ideas!)…
All the same, it’s good to see you working hard at it and I speak for the general MyBB audience that we are grateful for a fine piece of software.
Excuse my interrogation tone. :S
sock (March 6th, 2007, 4:16 am)
Um… what does “subscribing” do again? (:
Tikitiki (March 6th, 2007, 10:48 am)
In my opinion, I think the rating system should stay. You can’t base a threads quality just because of the amount of slang or l33t talk in it. That doesn’t make the thread worse than others. It’s just a different way of seeing threads. The rating system is for people to put their opinion into their rating vote. Not for the system to rate it for you.
ret a.k.a. sock (March 7th, 2007, 1:56 am)
Fine! Don’t answer! Be that way! See if I care!
/me shuts the door.
WDZ (March 8th, 2007, 12:47 pm)
[insert thumbs-up emoticon here]
Oh, and, /slap sock
ret (March 8th, 2007, 12:58 pm)
:’(
Just don’t be surprised if MILLIONS of MyBB users overlook the subscription feature just because they don’t know what it is!
Tikitiki (March 9th, 2007, 5:18 pm)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=define: subscribe&btnG=Search
I Luv google
ret (March 10th, 2007, 5:07 pm)
Err, thanks, but I meant what it does technically. :p
Tikitiki (March 10th, 2007, 6:34 pm)
“To subscribe is the action of declaring interest in parameters and published by others.”
- It sends some sort of notification for updates to your “subscription”. For example: I like thread x, so I will subscribe to it. Doing so will allow me to receive “updates”/”notifications” on thread x.
ret (March 12th, 2007, 11:06 pm)
Oh, so it’s an internal BBS thing. I see. That makes sense. For some reason that idea didn’t cross my mind. I thought it’s RSS. I guess I could’ve tried it instead of asking. I guess I don’t like trying things. I’m weird. Sorry.
Tikitiki (March 13th, 2007, 9:48 am)
It’s very like RSS, except it’s e-mail style and only want you want
MyBB Games ‘07 » Blog Archive » Some Ideas Hit Me! (April 4th, 2007, 8:38 pm)
[…] so proud of myself! Why? Because while I was reading Chris’ new post on his blog, It struck me that I really had some good ideas for MyBB. Read, vote and comment on my […]