Notifications

To get a feel for the weakness in Dolphin all you need to do is to operate a Dolphin site; your members will tell you what they hate about the platform.  One of the biggest shortcomings in Dolphin from the feedback of my members is Notifications.  A search of the market for notifications revealed very little; please do not mention EVO Wall - Advanced News Feed, it is a nice module but many of my members have said they would like the Friend's Timeline removed and it is just a replacement for that and I have already looked and gone to the demo.

The current Dolphin notifications does the job, however, it needs improvements.  For one, there is no filter system on it.  Everything is piled together as it comes in.  If one could filter the notifications based on type and relationship, it would greatly improve the notification module.  For example, a filter to show only entries related to blog posts so I can easily see when someone has commented on my blog post.  Also, I might want to filter to show that lists only when a friend has left a comment.  One of the biggest complaints I have from members is that they don't really know when someone has left a comment on their posts.  To use notifications, they have to page back through trying to see if someone left a comment.  Maybe a date filter on the notifications as well.  With a few filters in place on the notifications, members could easily see what is happening and thus there would be better interactions on my site.

I have an email notification system that I like very much but not every member wants more emails.  They want to be able to log in and quickly see what is going on with their posts without having to visit each post to see if a new comment has been left.

If a module developer wants to take the notifications module and make a much better one that can more easily show my members what is happening with their content, I would be very interested in buying it.  There is currently nothing in the market to handle this.  Or if Boonex wants to improve their module, it would be a real improvement to Dolphin.  I don't get complaints about FaceSucks and Mobile, I get complaints about knowing when someone left a comment on their blog posts.  I have gotten that complain since we first opened our site.  It is an important aspect of a social networking site that really influences interaction.

 That will be very nice if boonex can improve or upgrade the " notifications - Alerts" members can't really see it on the button and it is too small. plus it should be on the top  and big where users can see who view, comment, like, upload and so on. This is why most sites that use dolphin platform look so bored to most of the members. Without a great notifications people would join the site but not coming back that often. Please Boonex improve the notifications or Alerts... and also this is one of the reason members always complaint site is very bored.

This is my option.........

Interesting why this is not gaining more attention.  The poor notification system of Dolphin is killing my site; and this is from feedback of my members, and has probably killed a lot of other Dolphin based sites.

What do you think about creating a new topic with all enhancements we want in future versions of dolphin?

I am thinking about some improvements: privacy settings, account management, advanced settings for blocks pages, new features for the photos module, etc.

Please see my other forum post on this: Boonex needs to add that section to the Forum Index.

 I'm right behind you on this!

Very good points made here GG. This is a big area that needs lots of work, members would like to know what others are doing or have done, and they are clueless how to find it because it's so complicated.

I do have to mention, my members were satisfied when I added the 3col to the site from IBDW, not to expensive and each additional site (module) has a discount price.

Shows way more activity than what is default with a un modded site.

I just set up a forum topic on my site and sent my members an announcement asking for their input on notifications.  I already have one developer interested; they can reveal who if they wish.  When I get the feedback from my members I will pass that information along.

Yes, I looked at the 3col as well as the new Evo Wall; more than once as notifications has been an ongoing issue.  The new Evo Wall is impressive and if we had the money in the budget I probably would add that to the site.  They do add to the site but they do not do what my members want.  As I said, just adding a filter to the current notification block would go a long ways to improving it.

Believe it or not; There is no way to have a successful site without a great Notifications- Alerts. Something about that "red!" Notifications or Alerts will make them think your site is "cool, fresh, friendly and fun". But too bad if you are using the wrong platform.

It will be extremely hard for your site to get successful with the boonex platform. I paid a lot of $$$$ over the years more than 9 developers at boonex market to change Notifications - Alerts or to make the site look different.  they create a lot of bugs on the site I had to pay someone else to do a fresh dolphin installation on two sites " back up only members and photos. it was very stressful..

If the Notifications or Alerts does not upgrade or update boonex platform has failure write all over it and the "Mobile App" need work as well. I have 4 boonex prime license over the years I closed 2 Now just two active.

I had a Survey over the year to see why most of the members of my sites think the site are so bored "Mann This Site Boringg as Hell" Some of them say " I don't know when someone email me" Some say " the search" How to look for members on the site" most of them say it is the Notifications- Alerts.

I'm still developing my own site and the point about notifications certainly is valid. For that reason I'm willing to write a mod that will push notifications to the client when an event takes place.

 I have been playing around with some ideas and think I can have a simple framework ready (let's play it safe) before the end of the weekend, using code snippets I have ready. What I was thinking is a big, red, semi-transparent banner that spreads the whole width of the page, with a notification containing info about the person and the event (including link).

The alert will come with it's own CSS so you can change the alert to your likes.

This might be a useful part of notifications.  I noticed that Dolphin as an alert system in place as I have seen some notices pop up in the upper right corner of the screen that stay for a bit then fade away.  However, I don't know what they cover as I don't tend to stay on the site all the time.

OK, as promised... I have done some investigation in how this could be done and have a framework ready that will use the member menu and alerter system, in place by Dolphin, to show alerts on:

- profile: view (incl from mobile devices), edit, rate

- friend: accept, request

- favourites: add

- avatar: add, change, rate

- comments: post, reply, update, rate

- blogs: create, edit, view, rate

- files/photos/sounds: add (in case when following someone)

This is not a definite list and I might add some alerts or remove some but am confident I can come up with a module that will add a lot more alerts for your members to work with.

Thank you!

I'm looking forward to seeing this listed in the market. 

Great! I can't wait...

Thanks.  I have some feedback already from my members on how they would like notifications to work.  Will pull it all together when I see the feedback slow.

This would be a great feature. Something subtle, like facebook, or okcupid - where they have a little box pop up in the bottom right.  Group comment notifications would be especially appealing.  Looking forward to seeing this more than anything else since notifications keeps people engaged in real time.

2 modules you would need are:

Ultimate Nofitier

and

Notifications Manager

Ultimate Notifier adds notifications for just about everything!

and Notifications Manager allows your users to choose which ones they get notified about.

The ONLY issue I had was that my site would send out TONS of emails from the ultimate notifier.

I changed it to send internal emails for about 90% of the notifications so they go to the internal mailbox only.

For the minimal amount of people that are using my site right now, it works VERY well.

If you have a busy site and use the Ultimate Notifier, your site will spend a LOT of time sending out emails.  (LOL).

I would definitely recommend only sending internal emails with Ultimate Notifier.

Of course with any module I purchase, I spent quite a bit of time adjusting the notifications and what is sent and what is ignored.

I would recommend you set it up on a test site 1st and adjust to your liking.

I've spent the last two weeks looking in to a solution for this and the more time I spent on it, the closer I got to building a copy of the spy module (with some extra features). I therefore cloned the spy module and am adding the needed features to that, rahter then spending more time writing, testing and maintaining the full code myself.

Never the less, it was a good lesson in better understanding Dolphin handlers, streams, creating popups and baloons.

Regarding the Ultimate Notifier, I will have part two available soon . This will provide on-site notifications instead of via Email.

The feedback I am getting is that members don't want a pop-up box.  They want a page they can go to that lists all the notifications.  They are not all that fond of the blocks in the account page; I have both the spy block and the friend's timeline and they are not that crazy about either one.

By the way, we have the Ultimate Notifier for emails and it is a great email notifier but not everyone wants to be notified by email.

@Modzzz, that sounds great.  Thanks for your work on this.

geek_girl: I'm curious if your members indicated how they wish to be notified if not by a pop-up? Would they prefer to check that page on their own - without any prompting?

I too like the idea of being able to peruse a separate page of notifications at my leisure. I'm just not sure I'd always remember to do so.

I think overall, they wanted a notifications page.  Now when the spy module is installed, it does create a notifications link in the account menu.  However, on my site it is broken when you try to go to the next page, it takes ones to the index page.  It does not do this in the block on the account page so that is strange.  I have not looked into why.

The other thing that users thought would help with interactions is knowing when someone replies to a comment they left on a post.  The current spy module does not list those.

How are those modules coming along Denre & Modzzz?  We've been waiting very patiently the past 3 weeks for more feedback 

Bump

If I recall, Denre's module is in the Market.  Modzzz has recently had some surgery done so his module may be delayed a bit.

I have currently the same Problem. This Thread was started in 2013, has this been solved/improved?

I need a News Feed/Timeline on my home page, but instead of showing absolutely everything thats being done on the Website. I need a subscription System like on Facebook, so that only things are shown to my Members, in which they are actually involved. Comments in Groups they have joined, Stuff that their Friends are doing and so on.

I have also checked the EVO Wall that was already mentioned by the Thread Starter, but after doing some tests on the Testpage i have realised that it works very similar like the current Boonex Timeline Module.

The answer is no and I guess my members either got use to what was included with Dolphin or left my site.   I may revisit this after looking at the current 7.2 version to see how it works and write my own.

Any news for Ultimate Notifier part two?

Yes, I am still interested in this as well.

I'm interested in this as well. In particular:

1. The ability to choose if you get nothing, emails, alerts or both for an event.

2. Better sorting/grouping of the notifications.

Does anyonwe know if this has moved on at all?

Do you look at this, this is exactly what he does. Since I use is a big step forward, but it is true that it should be as natively.

https://www.boonex.com/m/replies-reminder