Inclusion of Full Text in Subscription Emails, etc...

[Oleg]

I support including full message text in private message notification emails.

The current behavior is just bad usability. I received an email, I read the subject, I clicked it, I read the message and now instead of knowing the message contents I additionally have to click a link, (look up my password, type it in), log in, wait to be redirected, read the message.

There are situations where I cannot read the forum. Besides the obvious example, many email services provide access via https and phpbb.com and most forums do not, which becomes important if I happen to be on a public wireless network.

I have been on forums where not including message text in emails was considered a feature for a number of reasons, but that sort of thing is specialized enough to really ought to be opt-in instead of the only possible behavior.

How would you handle BBCode?

I'd say this decision is less important than including the contents, so for version 1 sending original message as it was entered could be acceptable, and then solicit community feedback as to how the messages should be presented. HTML email will allow doing the same bbcode processing as done on boards. Users could indicate whether they want to receive html email as was mentioned.

Also this could render the point of being able to delete messages. For e.g. if someone is swearing, it will be removed before many people see it. If it is subscribed to and included in the email then they know the message already.

This won't apply to private message text.

For topic notifications, if this is really an issue then perhaps providing a knob to admins to enable/disable sending message text in topic notification emails is the best approach. Then boards that do not need much moderation could enable it, and flamefests could disable it. Maybe even scope the knob to individual forums. Doing a pilot with private messages could demonstrate demand for this functionality, or lack thereof, before the more complex questions related to thread notifications are tackled.

Give the user the option to receive plain text emails or html e-mails. For plain text they would receive the contents of the post with all bbcode stripped out.

What would you strip out of

Code: Select all

 [url=http://xxx]text[/url] 

?

[MichaelC]

Currently it is stripped out in feeds and I think it would be done the same way.

And why would that not apply to PMs? The original user can both edit/delete PMs.

[Oleg]

Currently it is stripped out in feeds and I think it would be done the same way.

So, do you propose sending just 'text' in the above example?

And why would that not apply to PMs? The original user can both edit/delete PMs.

Technically yes, in practice this should be so infrequent that I don't expect it to matter.

I was unaware that senders could either edit or delete private messages, so perhaps I am mistaken. Do you edit your private messages often?

[DavidIQ]

Currently it is stripped out in feeds and I think it would be done the same way.

So, do you propose sending just 'text' in the above example?

If the dev team had decided to strip them out of feeds already then why should it matter now? If this is a sincere question then yes, 'text' would be what's sent in the above example. Not everyone would be happy with that but if not many people complained, if any, when you guys did it to the feeds then I don't see why it would matter now.

[Oleg]

Request on .com and potentially useful code: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... &t=2114725

[MichaelC]

Currently it is stripped out in feeds and I think it would be done the same way.

So, do you propose sending just 'text' in the above example?

Yes, sorry for not making that clear.

And why would that not apply to PMs? The original user can both edit/delete PMs.

Technically yes, in practice this should be so infrequent that I don't expect it to matter.

I was unaware that senders could either edit or delete private messages, so perhaps I am mistaken. Do you edit your private messages often?

I do every now and then, if I make mistakes, leave something out etc.

[Alex Smith]

I've had my forum members request this recently, and I would love to see the feature too.

currently possible via MODs

I've been unsuccessful finding any MOD that does this? Although I found someone (send full PM as email?) who has partially achieved this by manually making some changes to /includes/functions_privmsgs.php

[bonelifer]

I've had my forum members request this recently, and I would love to see the feature too.

currently possible via MODs

I've been unsuccessful finding any MOD that does this? Although I found someone (send full PM as email?) who has partially achieved this by manually making some changes to /includes/functions_privmsgs.php

http://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/prime_notify

[naim]

Currently it is stripped out in feeds and I think it would be done the same way.

So, do you propose sending just 'text' in the above example?

Maybe copy the link beside the text enclosed like this:
text <link-url>

{b}
{b} <{a}>

[imkingdavid]

What would you strip out of

Code: Select all

 [url=http://xxx]text[/url] 

?

Just to provide my input here without having read the most recent page of posts.

I think we should strip out the text and provide the URL. Here's why.

If I post a topic with the following:

Hey everyone, I've got a really neat website I want you to see! Click here to check it out!

Which of these would you rather have?

Hey everyone, I've got a really neat website I want you to see! Click http://example.com to check it out!

Hey everyone, I've got a really neat website I want you to see! Click here to check it out!

Because the link is clickable, it makes sense to say "Click <link>". Since "here" is not clickable, it would not make sense to say "Click here". I would click and nothing would happen and I would be sad.

Alternatively, we could do this:

Hey everyone, I've got a really neat website I want you to see! Click here (http://example.com) to check it out!

EDIT: And I see that I should have read the most recent post, since that is ultimately the same idea as ^this^, just using <> instead of ().