WebmasterWorld Email Notification

Being notified when a thread is updated

[Sebastian]

I think the concept is great - being notified when a thread you've started or are participating in has changed.

However, has anyone else noticed that the email notification from webmasterworld is the ugliest, most badly set out notification message you've ever received?

So I ask...does Brett have any control over the format of this message?

Love the concept, naturally, but the formatting makes the emails look like a sea of cobbled links stuck in as tight a space as possible. And most of the links I really don't want, considering I've "subscribed" to that particular thread, not to all the other links which come with it.

[Brett_Tabke]

>control

Yes - 100%. hehe. It's all programmed Sebastian. I like them - they do what they need to do.

I can do some other stuff in there, but I've chosen not to yet.

- ads. There is an option built in to randomly throw in some text advertsing at the bottom.
- footer. Option for a default sys wide footer (sig file) on every eamil.
- tips. You can create a text file, and the email routines will grab one random line out of that file. I envisioned it for "tip of the day" stuff or "tag lines".
- on/off on the last active threads and set how many to include.

Got any suggestions for email beautification?

[Sebastian]

Mostly it's about formatting. Let's have a look what we can come up with here.

<brainstorming>
Firstly, the subject of the email:

[WebmasterWorld Community Center] Reply Post Notification

Here it shows the name of the forum from whence the message came. Now, in a very active forum, like Google, I may be "tracking" dozens of different threads, so perhaps the title of the thread might be more meaningful than the forum name as the email subject. In that way, should I be busy, I could prioritize which threads I wanted to read the replies to first.

Now let's have a look at the body of the email.

From
[webmasterworld.com...]
Brett_Tabke replied to the following discussion: [webmasterworld.com...]
Subject : WebmasterWorld Email Notification... etc

This is mostly about formatting and line length, me thinks. It seems to be wrapping unnaturally (what you're seeing is actually what appears in the email). Perhaps a linefeed in there somewhere. Make it a little more readable.

So what comes next?

>Last 4 active threads from the recent post list:
[webmasterworld.com...]

Redirect by URL Requested
Want to redirect formmail relay spammers
Search Engine Promotion [webmasterworld.com...] ... etc

Actually, when I received my very first notification, many sunny months ago, this "additional" information and links (about a page full of them) were quite "confusing". As in...what's all this stuff supposed to mean?

Of course, it's simply the last four messages posted (I think) to webmasterword. Thanks for the additional information, but I very often find they refer to message forums I'm not even interested in, like "webmasters who have only one arm and speak in double dutch" (he exaggerated), so to me they're just message "clutter". I'd ditch the "most recent posts" and just stick to notifying me about the thread(s) I'm currently tracking.

So do I have a suggested format? Not specifically. But let's have a look at an example, and I pull one out at random - a notification that I receive from another site. I'm not suggesting this format, it's simply an example, but it is quite clear, and uncluttered, and user friendly.

I quote (names are changed to protect the guilty):

Hello <user>,

<somedude> has just replied to a thread you have subscribed to entitled - <some thread> - in the <some forum> forum of <website.com>.

This thread is located at: [website.com...]

There may be other replies also, but you will not receive any more notifications until you visit the board again.

Yours,
<website> Open Forum team

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Unsubscription information:

To unsubscribe from this thread, please visit this page: [website.com...]

To unsubscribe from ALL threads, please visit this page: [website.com...]
[/brainstorming]

[Brett_Tabke]

Thanks Sebastian. Bookmarked. Will come back to it, when I set down to rework that set of scripts.

[Sebastian]

Brett

Thanks :)

[gmoney]

I think the email notification system is great but if we are trying to make it better then I would agree that it would be nice to have something about the title of the thread within the title of the email notification.

[Syren_Song]

Add another vote in favor of indicating the thread the email relates to (if you're keeping score). It can be awfully confusing otherwise if you're keeping track of multiple threads in the same forum area.