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Diary Notifications Are Here
Mon Jul 22 2024

I have implemented a basic Diary Notification system. I say basic because as a reader you can 'follow' or 'unfollow' a diary (not a user, remember that users can have many diaries now) and if you follow a diary you will receive an email notification when they post or update.

You MUST be logged in to follow or unfollow. You do NOT need to have your own diary though. That is, if for example I wanted my mum to be able to follow my diary, she would need to create an account and log in. But she would not have to have her own diary.

This is necessary to prevent somebody signing up someone else's e-mail address to receive notifications. There may be other security considerations we implement later if required - all of which would be nigh on impossible if the user wasn't logged in. It does perhaps introduce a slight amount of friction to the process, but is unfortunately unavoidable.

A demonstration image

A demo of the icon.

The image to the left is a quick demo screenshot. Click the bell to follow, click the bell again to unfollow. Nice and easy.

The bell won't show up on your own diary because, well, I'm not sure you'd want to follow your own diary? 😉

I mentioned above that this is currently very basic. There is no option for diarists to not allow people to follow them (aside of course from making the diary private). But I will implement that if people want it.

There's no way for diarists to see who is following them. That may come later.

There's no method for not sending a notification when you add or update an entry yet either. The old system had a checkbox on the entry to tell then system whether to send notifies for an entry. Let me know if you think this is something you want.

If you receive a notification from a diary you didn't want please do NOT mark it as spam! Follow the instructions in the e-mail to turn off notifications for that diary. Marking as spam can cause us problems in the future with sending other e-mails to you that you may actually want.

As always, use the Contact link to drop me a message if you find anything wrong with this, or anything else. Or, you can now raise an issue instead and have it tracked on the backed development platform 😃

Now, go click that bell icon for this diary so you receive notifications. And do the same for all your friends 😀

4 Comments
  • From:
    D'vorahDavida
    On:
    Mon Jul 22 2024
    Yes! I am getting comment notifies. I will go click some buttons to follow everyone in a bit! This is awesome. I have had company for the last several days so I've not been on here a day or two. Onward!
  • From:
    MissTick
    On:
    Mon Jul 22 2024
    The old system had a checkbox on the entry to tell then system whether to send notifies for an entry. Let me know if you think this is something you want... Actually, just realised - does that means - if I edit and save in the process multiple times, others will get as many notifies of the same entry as my saved edits?! If this is the case, then yes please, I would like to either have a button "Notify" or at least get Preview option in editor, so we can see what it looks like before saving/posting. Handy when positioning pictures, or special formats for the text?
  • From:
    DearDiary1
    On:
    Mon Jul 22 2024
    Oh, yes, I will be implementing the tick box again tomorrow :) There'll definitely be times where you don't want to send a notify to everyone, and playing in the sandbox is definitely one of those times :)
  • From:
    D'vorahDavida
    On:
    Mon Jul 22 2024
    Just checking one thing. Have you imported my old Yetzirah diary to the system yet? I went back in the calendar to 2021 and don't see any entries. If it's low on your priority list, no worries. I was just wondering. I don't NEED it right now. All the new functions are great. I love the simplicity of the bell for notifications. I seem to be getting them all. This is great!