Forum Digest Plugin?

kdwoell

Is there a plugin that enables users to configure an email digest for their forum subscriptions? We have users that want email notifications of new posts but don't to be notified the moment a post is made. E.g. a user might want to get a weekly digest of all new posts.

cdavid

Hmm, that's an interesting idea, but i don't think that it is (at least easily) doable, since you would have to mess a bit with the host. In Linux/Mac, you would set up a cron job that checks every 24 hours what new discussions have appeared and send the e-mail. Unfortunately, this is not the case in Windows (and I don't know how that's done).

So, the plugin would go beyond the application scope of Vanilla and would go into the internals of the OS, which is something that is dirty and not recommended. At least, that's my view of it.

/cd

cdavid

Though, you could hack it... I think. I'm not sure if the sleep command in PHP is non-blocking (thus not eating CPU time). If it is non-blocking, you could do something like this in a plugin:
while(true) { sleep(60*60*24); digest(); }

/cd

kdwoell

Uh...ok. BuddyPress does it. Google Groups does it. We dropped SimplePress because it does not have that feature. BuddyPress does but we dont want the overhead of its community construct. Were just looking for a simple forum for WP, that has this feature. Could one just set a database flag for what the user selects like daily, or weekly digests. A date flag would be set also in the DB so the forum engine knows when the user selects that option. As the system reports elapsed time, a script would be triggered sending a string of notifications in a single email, limited only to those since the last date flag. I'm not a developer but that is the logic I might apply.

dontforgetmario

"Hmm, that's an interesting idea, but i don't think that it is (at least easily) doable...."

You don't think is doable????

Interesting idea?

Of course is Interesting... most forums featured a Daily Digest...

...by the way... Nabble can also be embedding in WP and featured a daily digest as well... Invision Power as well... Vbulletin as well... Fedora as well...

where do you guys live? in the moon?

tomsleeter

Rather than using a VanillaForums plugin for daily digests, you might want to try using a third party app to parse your forum's RSS feed and send it to your subscribers. Mailchimp provides an RSS feature that lets you set up daily summaries of all new posts from any RSS feed.

Assuming you use Mailchimp, you can use the CommentsRSS and Mailchimp plugins to easily set up daily summaries without any server/cron setup.

slickforum

I'm wondering about this feature too. You are not the only one who'd like this in Vanilla.

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/20347/emails-for-all-categories-going-to-all-users

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/22636/automated-weekly-summary-email

@kdwoell said:
Uh...ok. BuddyPress does it.

Really is that a new feature natively built in? Or does it require a plugin?

@tomsleeter said:
Rather than using a VanillaForums plugin for daily digests, you might want to try using a third party app to parse your forum's RSS feed and send it to your subscribers.

Mmmm, interesting idea. Do you do this with your forum? The issue I see is that it might be hard to pick and choose what a forum RSS picks up and sends users. Ideally you'd just want to do the original posts.

tomsleeter

@slickforum Yes, I was using Mailchimp for my forum's daily digest. Nice timing, the official vanillaforums blog just posted an article on how to use Mailchimp to do exactly this - http://blog.vanillaforums.com/help/creating-forum-newsletter-mailchimp/

Following those steps, you will get a forum digest containing all new discussions (but no comments/replies). Mailchimp can parse the RSS feed and only send out NEW posts it finds in the feed, rather than sending out the whole feed every time.

Adrian

@tomsleeter‌ I had meant to write the post sooner. We have a couple of customers using Mailchimp in this way. Your original comment prompted me to get it out of drafts and onto the blog. Sometimes the reminder helps

slickforum

I'd prefer to see Vanilla integrate with other email marketing platforms @Adrian‌. MailChimp support is bad even when you pay.

Adrian

@slickforum‌ MailChimp, has been good for me, even on other outside projects, so I guess it's YMMV. Any provider that has RSS to Email should work, but I am not aware of any others.

As for integrating, I think Aweber has a plugin for the open source solution.

But let's not forget, being open source means anyone can build an integration. Not sure what demand there is for other solutions, but there are couple of ways to make that plugin happen:

1. Wait until someone else builds it
2. Build it yourself
3. Hire someone to build it
4. Contact your fav email provider to build it for you.

slickforum

Is it possible to do an email digest with a private Vanilla forum using a private RSS feed?

slickforum

Does @Adrian or anyone else know the answer to my question?

Linc

@slickforum That'd be what an API is for.