Updated When adding pages, set the last_update date so the Article goes into an Unread state

[MrWorldWide]

I use AMS as a story publishing tool. When an author publishes a new article (aka story) on my site, users are notified. Users are NOT notified, however, when an author adds a page (chapter) to a story. As you can imagine, this upsets the authors, who want to be read as widely as possible. Is there something I can do about this?

tldr we need new chapters to create an alert/notification just the same as publishing a new story does.

 

[Bob]

This is already a feature of the Watch Article functionality.

I've moved this to support as when creating a new page, a notification is sent to those that are WATCHING the Article (alert and email).

Here you can see that Mr Tester received an alert with Admin added a new page.



Members can enable/disable each specific alert/push notification, so maybe the user(s) that are saying that they are not receiving alerts, have those alerts disabled.

What MIGHT be happening is that the author created the page and set the status to Draft, then Edited the page and set the Status to Visible (which is not creating a new piece of content, its just changing the viewable state of the content). If you can confirm THAT is what is happening, then I could look into maybe adding an "update" type scenario into the edit process that is similar to the "update" type scenario when editing an article (main purpose it to notify users watching the article).

 

[MrWorldWide]

I might be misunderstanding you, but I don't think we're talking about the same thing. When an author adds a new story, the entire memberbase is notified that there is an unread story posted to the stories section, whether they're watching that particular author or not. When an author publishes a new chapter, I want the entire memberbase notified just the same way they are when a new article(story) is created, not just the members watching that particular author or story.

Am I making sense?

 

[Bob]

Am I making sense?

You keep using the term Notify/notification, which is a term that is used when talking about XenForo Notification System, which is use for sending alerts/emails to members that are watching content.

the entire memberbase is notified

There are no functions in AMS that sends notifications to the entire member base. Notifications are only sent to members watching content (in a new article case, only members watching the category that the new article is being posted in).

The TERM "Notify" is part of the XenForo Notification Handler, which is used to send XenForo Alerts (via the XF Alert Handler System) and emails.

AMS implements notifiers that send out alerts and emails to those WATCHING content (Watched Categories, Watched Authors and Watched Articles).

The Article Create Service has a function that sends notifications (alerts and emails) to members who are watching the Category that the Article is created in. It does NOT send Notifications (alerts and emails) to anyone that is NOT watching the Category that the Article is created in.

It kinda sounds like you are talking about the XenForo Find New System / Read Marking System eg "New posts", "New articles" etc etc etc. Notifications are not part of the XenForo Find New System / Read Marking System.

Maybe, what you are asking is to mark the Article as updated when a new PAGE is added, so that the Article shows up in the Find New System as Unread (in the same way that editing an article and choosing the UPDATE option, will mark the article as UNREAD as part of the Find New system.

Notifications = alerts and emails.

Find New = New/Unread.

Maybe tell me what you mean by "Notify all members". What is the actual NOTIFICATION that you are talking about?

 

[MrWorldWide]

It kinda sounds like you are talking about the XenForo Find New System / Read Marking System eg "New posts", "New articles" etc etc etc.

Exactly right. That's what I'm talking about. I want the New Item Indicator on the "New articles" tab of the find new system to reflect that the article is Unread, when adding a new PAGE to an article.

 

[Bob]

I follow ya now I've added a note to the TODO list to look into Read Marking for Article Pages in AMS 2.3.x.

 

[MrWorldWide]

Thanks! I've had a couple authors get on my case about this. Gotta keep those guys happy

 

[Bob]

I want the New Item Indicator on the "New articles" tab of the find new system to reflect that the article is Unread, when adding a new PAGE to an article.

When adding a new page to an article, the save process with include setting the "Last Update". The Last Update date is used to determine whether an article is READ or UNREAD since the last time that they viewed the article.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Its the ARTICLE that displays in the "New articles" Find New system, not article pages, so clicking on the title of the article is not going to take the viewing user to the newly added article PAGE, its simply going to take them to the article itself. You'd have to develop a new FindNew Handler for pages similar to comments (that would mean THREE FindNew handlers for AMS and that just is not happening.

What you REALLY need to do is teach your members how to use the WATCH System in XF as you can Watch an Article and when a new Page is added, it will use the XF Notices System to ALERT them via XF Alerts system, to include Push Notifications AND the XF Email System (will send them an email notifying them that a new Page has been added and will link them directly to the page.

 

[MrWorldWide]

Yep I do try to do that. Have you given any thought to the dating system we talked about before?

 

[Bob]

Have you given any thought to the dating system we talked about before?

This is not the place to talk about that lol

 

[MrWorldWide]

heya Bob, just wanna revisit this issue one more time. Authors refuse to use your beautiful chapter system because they feel like their new chapter won't get read if it's not displayed on the main story page as new content, so I'm trying to come up with some type of workaround because I really, really want to have all multi-chapter stories organized on the same page. I hardly know enough about the system to make a coherent suggestion so don't bite my head off, I'm just throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if anything sticks.

I know that xenforo has a 'latest posts' and 'latest threads' widget, which shows all new threads or posts from all members. Would it be possible to do something convoluted like create a new forum, have AMS make a post automatically in that new forum when an author adds a page to a story, then have a widget that displays new posts in that forum on the story page?