Notification Link in Email

PFAFF

The subdirectory for my forum is /forum, but I have my Wordpress Integration set to /community. When people get notified of activity, they get an email but it has the /forum/activity instead of the /community/#/activity for the embedded forum.

Is there a way to modify the link in the notification to have /community/# instead of /forum/ ?

vrijvlinder

Your /forum is the same exact forum even if you embed it because that is where the files reside. You can't change that because /community is not where you installed the forum it is only the link to the forum you embedded inside WP.

PFAFF

Let's say I change my folder name to /community, would that affect my embed negatively?

vrijvlinder

no , but the link to the forum in the embed page must not be yoursite.com/community

for example:

I have my forum embedded in WP page and have link to that embedded forum page on the menu of the WP site. It should not be the url of the stand alone forum or you will have a feedback loop. Call that link The_Community , or Communities, not community , the same if it was called forum.

PFAFF

@vrijvlinder, coming back to this. I see that %2$s generates the links in notification emails. Is there a way to manually modify %2$s so that /forum/ is replaced by /community/ when those links are generated?

peregrine

you realize the %2 just refers to the second parameter in the sprintf function which is the portion of the Url

https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/blob/release/2.1/applications/dashboard/models/class.activitymodel.php#L806

• the Url is just the route(path) column in the activity table

• which is acted upon by ExternalUrl function.

just some ideas - you might try fooling with

this can be modified with ExternalUrlFormat

$Configuration['Garden']['ExternalUrlFormat'] = "http://example.com/community/%s";

or perhaps

$Configuration['Garden']['Webroot'] = 'http://example.com/community/';

or you can always modify Email object if needed.... beforesendnotification trigger
http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/comment/233172/#Comment_233172

you can look here as well
http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/comment/227421#Comment_227421

PFAFF

This looks like a ton of useful resources, @peregrine. Thanks so much! This should get me started on finding a solution.

PFAFF

So, your first option basically just worked out of the gate... I had to change it up a little bit since I'm embedded to:

$Configuration['Garden']['ExternalUrlFormat'] = "http://example.com/community/#/%s";

But, otherwise, working perfectly.

Thanks!

PFAFF

Welp, ran into the same issue as @jamesinc here: http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/comment/227421/#Comment_227421

New discussions still have the /forum/.

A further wrinkle: when clicking on notifications in the actual forum, the modified links with /community/ open in a new window while the /forum/ links (new discussions) just open in the same frame (as they should).

peregrine

3 options and a server rule config.

1) don't embed your forum. there will always be something that is funky. (no matter what anyone else suggests some js or something won't work as expected).

2) get @rbrahmson to code you up a plugin, pronto.

or you might want to sharpen up your coding chops and write a plugin to modify the body in the Email object based on this event.... (you might want to file an issue on github as well).

hthttps://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/blob/release/2.1/applications/dashboard/models/class.activitymodel.php#L822tps://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/blob/release/2.1/applications/dashboard/models/class.activitymodel.php#L822

then the notification won't be changed and only the email will be changed.

3) force target blanks to be removed.

4) can't you use server rules to force the urls that are going to forum to be the embedded forum.

5) leave out %2s period and just post a generic link back to your site in the message itself hard-coded.

$Defintion['EmailStoryNotification'] ='%1\$s\n\nGo to the http://pfaffforums.com site for all your earthly delights';

I'd go with rbrahmson or option 1

PFAFF

So, for now (until I can sharpen my coding chops and can write a plugin), I think I've resolved to give up, just put a generic "visit /community to see!" in notifications; then they can use their User Box notifications to navigate directly to the update. That seems to solve pretty much all the issues. Not as integrated / slick as I'd like (a direct link to the update would be best), but doesn't have any funky side-effects (I was also having issues with mobile redirects not working... gah).

Thanks for all your help / advice, @peregrine! Very much appreciated!

jamesinc

Seeing as you tagged me, maybe I'll throw my two cents in. You can mitigate the issue a little bit by adding some .htaccess rules to 301 redirect the /forum/* links to /community/#/* (or whatever... you get the idea)

That way even if the links appear incorrectly at least clicking them will take you somewhere useful.

PFAFF

@jamesinc Did you do this? Have an example?

When I try a 301 redirect from /forum/ to /community/ my embed fails to load.

peregrine

if you want to change the url in the body in the e-mail

you could put this in a plugin.

this will work for any mail coming out of an activity.

not sure how new discussions trigger mail.

probably a better way to hook into phpmailer.

but I believe this works...

public function ActivityModel_BeforeSendNotification_Handler($Sender) {

$Email = & $Sender->EventArguments['Email'];
$Body = $Email->PhpMailer->Body;
// change /vanilla/  to /strawberry/
$Body = str_replace("/vanilla/", "/strawberry/", $Body);
$Email->PhpMailer->Body = $Body;
}

}

PFAFF

Thanks for putting this up, @peregrine! I'll try this out this weekend!