Could you change the Notify Me to have another option to receive notifications WEEKLY, either instead of or in addition to DAILY? We're still getting complaints about too much email, even when classmates have their settings to get only a summary of notifications. The summary is good, combining everything into one.

Also, I posted photographs of our all-years annual picnic in a new photo gallery, in the name of the classmate who had taken the pictures. I went back and added more photos before making the gallery live, so that was fine. But after I checked the box to notify everyone about the new gallery, I had to go back and add a couple more pictures, and there was no way to suppress the second notification about the additions to the same gallery on the same day. Nor do I want a third notice to go out if I later add a few more. We should have some way to control that.

General question. If you make the gallery inactive, add/change images, and then make it active again, will that generate a classmate notice?

Yes, the notification will still be sent.

Scott, what about the first part - choice for weekly notices?

Mary Smith - SPHSAA President & Alumni Records wrote:

This, too, has always been a concern of mine and have added my two cents a time or two on previous posts. I would like to see the check box with "Notify ( # ) Classmates that this page has been updated" included at the bottom of each gallery page when photos are added.

So would I. We lost a few classmates that wanted to quit the site because of the last change I had to put there notify flag to off...not a good thing..now I noticed all the notify notices are back to over 500 again.
This is unacceptable..We just found a bunch of '64 people..and now don't want to lose them
When a change like that is going to happen CC needs to notify all the site admins..that they are doing that.
The alumni are not happy about resetting their notify me toggles...they all just reset them..and now they have to do it again..I have over 500 on the site.
I am not likely it and neither are they!!
Please CC notify us when you make any type of software changes that is gonna affect the website. I may be sounding like a B*tch..but I have been in IT almost 50 yrs..and that's the way it was done!!!

Rhonda McClellan wrote:

Making pirate sound ARRGHH matey

Actually at my request, CC did default all of our enrolled alumni (well over 3,000) to get mostly no notifications, but I only found out about this when a number of them complained about the vast increase in email. Maybe CC did this on all multi=year sites? Maybe not...

As of right now, we are not going to be adding more options.

Thanx for the response..Now I can bug my people again to got back and adjust their notify me setting.
Scott Mastenbrook wrote:

Back to the uncontrolled notifies for galleries for a moment.

This is an old and very popular request. Either of two changes would be appreciated:

(1) Add the "Notify xx classmates..." option for Galleries, or

(2) Disable notifies when changes are made to an inactive gallery which is then re-activated.

Are either of these on the 'wish list' or pending task list?

I can ask.

I agree with you all. Too many emails from me/site is a complete turn off and afraid they will turn the sit off completely. Now I try to limit when I make changes or post items to once a week or every two weeks which is not the point of this site. The folks who want to look will look on their own and the ones who don't look often will end up just "deleting" the site.

So the deal here is yes, we're going to add the checkbox to Gallery Creator (the one you all know and love). If the gallery is a community gallery and the classmate is the one creating a gallery the classmate will not see the checkbox though (likely wouldn't understand it). I *think* in this case we're only going to send notifies of classmate-upload galleries to people who are actually following that classmate. i.e. this will work similar to you getting a notice that somebody you are following has added a photo to his or her profile. The only difference is here that person is adding photos to a community gallery, but given the fact you're following that person, you will get the notice.

The alternative is when classmates post galleries admins get notified of the gallery, and then have a chance to release or not release an all class notice of this (to the people who have this Notify Me option turned on anyway) but in my view that's getting too complex (a notice to release the notice just gets convoluted). I suggest we keep it simple and only send out automated notices of classmate-uploaded galleries to those who are actually following the classmate. Keeps it simple and eliminates what in many cases may be unwanted notifications.

That sounds reasonable. But I'm not clean on the options whe when admins are creating or adding to a community gallery? Sure would love to control the notify until we're ready for it to go out....

Maybe I am wrong... but I thought that when I marked this to not send notifications, it was for all pages. I've had more time to pay attention as I work on my sites and noticed we have pages without the option to check a box.

No wonder members are setting everything or most things to NEVER.

Good point Gwen. I'm so used to seeing the unchecked check-to-send box on most pages since I set the "Unchecked" option long ago, and forgot that an automatic notify was 'normal' if 'Unchecked" wasn't selected and people didn't think to uncheck the box when they saved a page. And there are still pages like Galleries and the Message Forum where there is no choice. Most of us do try to keep the notifies to a reasonable minimum if we can.

In short ... I'd sure like to see that box (either prechecked or unchecked according to the Preference option), on all pages - including Galleries and the Message Forum - at least for admins.

Personally, I am bummed that CC has to make these piece-by-piece changes to satisfy all of us. And before you say it... don't blame them for beta/no-beta... because one or more would still have a problem with it. Can't please all of the people all of the time.

My request long ago was the default be set to never for all but emails we send out. As that did not happen, I have members choosing not to even get the emails. Not a good thing as it means more work for me, which I'd like to get paid to do. ha ha ha.

While John Ralph is reading my last post..
If it were set to never for all except the admin emails...
John, you would be able to turn it on.
I could leave it off.
That, to me, would be great.

For the record... I still appreciate our sites, even when I take a deep breath.

Now... over to General Discussion for a post about TAP.

But you can control the default for ALL places this checkbox exists already. Many who don't want to have to remember to turn it off just mark it to be off by default on the Preferences page, so they have to turn it ON when desired. We've already addressed this one long ago.

In any case, John, yes I'm talking about adding the same checkbox for Admins for Galleries. If you want the notice to go out just check the box (or leave it checked based on how you've set your Preferences as mentioned above) and the notice will go out to all classmates who have signed up to receive Gallery notices. Thus Admin will now have full control over this.

As it pertains to classmates adding galleries to a community gallery, the point of the solution described above is so we wouldn't have to make little changes to satisfy everyone. Instead we're suggesting a default for everyone (again only as it pertains to classmates participating in a community gallery) that sends notifies (assuming the classmate has signed up for gallery notifications) only to classmates who have subscribed to the Profile of the person uploading a gallery. Let me state it very specifically:

If you have signed up to receive photo gallery notifies, AND you subscribe to a specific classmate (let's say John Doe), and John Doe then uploads a photo gallery inside of a community gallery, you will then receive your notify for this.

Even if you have signed up to receive gallery notifications, if a classmate you have NOT subscribed to uploads a gallery, you will NOT be notified. While this surely isn't 100% perfect, we feel it's better than other possible solutions, such as making the notification pending, and notifying the admin of a pending notification. Thus we'd have to send a notification to allow the admin to release or not release the notification. And here we start getting into overkill.

The solution above I think is reasonable (especially since none of this is mission critical) and keeps gallery notifications caused by classmates only to those who subscribe to the classmate, eliminating any possibility of galleries entered by classmates you're not following generating emails that in many cases may be unwelcomed.

And it is not easy but I'm holding onto this!

Do not expect anyone to 'get' this. I'm simply having a day of laughter.

By the way if the Admin is adding to a community gallery, they'd still have the checkbox. i.e. the Admin will always have the checkbox regardless of whether it's an admin-only gallery, or a community gallery.

If the Admin wants to release a gallery notification to all classmates who signed up for gallery notifications then he or she can do that, i.e. in this case the notification would also go to classmates that are not following the admin.

Oops! Sorry Gwen! Your attachment didn't come in via my admin view. You were in fact referencing same thing, my apologies.

What specific area are you suggesting a checkbox should be present where there is none presently?

Thanks Brad. My fumble-fingered typing didn't end up asking what I wanted to confirm - that the check box would always be there for admins, and who'd get the notify. All clear now.

Any chance we can also get a check box for other pages (like the Message Forum) which don't already have one - one of these days?

And Gwen, our 'pay' for what we do is in a different kind of currency....

Can you expand on the reason for having this in the Message Forums? You do mean Message Forums not User Forums correct?

Message Forums is very simple code we made probably 8 years ago now. If somebody wants to get notified when messages are posted there, and somebody posts a message, shouldn't people get the notification they themselves signed up for?

If you make notifications optional for admin posts, do you also make them optional for classmate posts too? Especially if somebody is signed up to receive these only once daily I don't see this as a very large issue?

We could potentially add the checkbox at every single point in the system the admin can enter anything. But I think in some cases -- maybe things like Message Forums -- it's overkill. Agree? Disagree?

Can't argue with your logic, although a quick edit to a post in the Message Forum only gives you a "Submit" button with no option for an admin to clean up a spelling error or typo - long before the whole class sees the first post - or another notify goes out.

In general now, we do have an option for most everything that uses the Editor, but... yes, I would certainly not be offended if I had that option in every place I might make visible changes.

Unfortunately after a lengthy conversation with Programming this turns out to be far more convoluted than meets the eye. Long story but when you edit a gallery landing page we already have the checkbox for sending or not sending updates. The act of uploading photos themselves ALSO triggers an update. There, of course, everything is Flash. So the checkbox would need to be added to the Flash itself. That's going to odd certainly, and I have little doubt missed by many.

Technically, if somebody signs up to be notified of galleries, and a gallery is added, their notice goes out precisely as it should. They're getting exactly what they signed up to get. These notices are already held until the Admin activates a gallery, given the Admin plenty of time to complete the gallery and only then take it live (make it active), thus triggering the notice. There's already a built-in delay on this one as well, ensuring the Admin has had ample time to make everything "just so" before classmates who signed up for this receive their notice.

I really hate to add the checkbox to the Flash photo uploader itself. Reason being it makes something already complex even more complex, there's actually no good space for it whatsoever, and I'm confident would be often missed here.

Given the fact the system is already doing precisely what it's supposed to be doing, and it's sending out photo notices only to those who signed up for them exactly as it should, I'm inclined to put this one on the backburner for now. In an ideal world the current Flash uploader gets replaced with something new, as this doesn't work on iPads anyway, and we rethink this out in a new framework that makes more sense than jury rigging what's currently available.

Disappointing, but I understand where you're coming from. While it is functioning 'as designed', our need was to do what we often do on most other pages, minimize the notifies sent as we continue building/editing a gallery while letting folks see what we've done so far - if they go looking. Looking forward to an 'ideal world'... Someday.

Yep I totally understand. The fact that two things here can trigger a notify (alteration of the landing page and the act of uploading photos), and the fact that the photo uploader is a self-contained photo upload system really throws a wrench into a checkbox that specifically pertains to photos. This is fortunately some of the last Flash left in the system. A similar non Flash uploader is probably going to be a difficult challenge. Flash was a great tool and Apple's insistence on not supporting it really hurt what developers were able to do. I still see a lot of things in Flash to this day because in many regards there's no technological equivalent. It's all evolving of course though so we'll have to take a look at what we can do here.

There are several non-flash solutions that I've given links to many times. They can do what is done now and then some. Very easy to find. They have reasonable licensing fees. IOW, it's been done more than once for some time.

OK, until the current Gallery Creator is updated to one of the available replacements, how about a much simpler mini-solution?

In the Flash code, there has to be one line which automatically triggers a notify when an updated gallery is made active. Comment that line out, allowing us to inactivate a page, make changes, and then activate it again - like we can do for other pages, announcements, etc, to bypass the automatic notify. Everything else would continue to work as it does now, triggering a notify if changes were made to an active gallery.