Forum Subscriptions, Site Search and Site Upgrade News

News
1

Howdy all,

I think the most common requests for the new site are: forum subscriptions, and easier access to search.

Tonight we enabled the notifications_forum module, which allows one to subscribe to forums and threads by clicking the “Subscribe to…” link at the top of either the forum or the thread in question. You can also manage your subscriptions on the Account page under the Notifications tab (the first one; I’ll figure out how to fix the label on that eventually…right now, both issue tracker notifications and other notifications have the same label), so you can unsubscribe easily and selectively, based on your desire for email from the site.

For site search, I’ve punted for the moment…I would like for there to be a search box on every page, and, in fact, that was the way it worked when we first launched the site. But, I soon realized it caused a black bar across the top of the screen and logo on some browsers, so I disabled it until I could figure it out. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I have put a Site Search link in the menu at the bottom of every page. Search is quite flexible, and for logged in users, you can choose to selectively search forums, documentation, or other parts of the site. It’s also reasonably quick, and seems to return reasonable results. I’ll keep working on it, and will get a search box enabled on every page as soon as I figure out the CSS problem that breaks for some browsers.

Licenses are now instantly available for new purchases. The software repository and the license checker all query the same database as the website, so they are never out of sync. There’s still some display quirks, and a usability for downloading the install script could be improved.

Existing licenses that need renewal or upgrade are still requiring manual intervention; if you find yourself needing to renew or upgrade, email me or open a ticket and I’ll try to get it dealt with quickly. There’s a bit of a backlog for that (though for most folks, the license extension we gave everyone keeps their license active long enough for this to not be a big issue), so be patient (but feel free to holler if it’s urgent!).

Thanks for all the great feedback, so far, folks. We’ll keep working on this until it is nice for everyone.

Cheers,

Joe

2

is there the possibility to set automatic notification so if I reply to a thread I’m instantly subscribed to it?

In account page (https://www.virtualmin.com/user) there are two different tabs called “Notifications”.

3

is there the possibility to set automatic notification so if I reply to a thread I’m instantly subscribed to it?

Good question. In Drupal 6, there was a notifications module for that, but I can’t seem to find a similar one for Drupal 7 (there is comment_notify, but that works with its own rules and stuff, and I want something that integrates into the notifications framework, so we don’t end up with yet another bloody “Notifications” tab!).

In account page (https://www.virtualmin.com/user) there are two different tabs called “Notifications”.

Yep, I mentioned that above. I’m working on it. The problem is that both the project_issue module and the notifications module have decided they should have that label on the account page. Sometimes, the decisions that Drupal and module developers make utterly baffle me. project_issue, in particular, seems full of bad ideas about user interaction (like the inability to edit status while commenting…you have to click “edit” and then can comment; weird UI that kinda requires one to predict the future about whether you’ll be able to change the state of the issue or not, which I usually only figure out once I’ve finished writing a reply!).

4

I think youve probably got a permissions problem there - I’m not seeing any subscribe links anywhere, even when logged in.

5

Crap, you’re right. Fixed now. Drupal is so ornery and uses jargon in such ridiculous ways. I’d searched for “forum” in permissions, and didn’t see anything related to subscriptions, so assumed it didn’t need permissions. But, no, it requires subscribe permissions on “taxonomy”.

Thanks for the heads up!