Feedback on SubscribeAddOn

-- MarkusBajones - 05 Sep 2006

Thank you for sharing this useful add-on with the TWikiCommunity!

I made some minor edits to the add-on topic, please feel free to take this into the next release.

-- PeterThoeny - 05 Sep 2006

Finally! Finally a brave soul provided this handy little feature, so many of us non-programmers were waiting for!
THANK - YOU - MARKUS!
NB: I wish this addon would be made available on this site - would be extremely useful here IMHO!

-- StephanMaasen - 15 Sep 2006

Thanks for the add-on. Version 1.000 has a couple of issues:

• It scans for "Users.TWikiGuest" in the WebNotify topic. This is true only if you've renamed the Main web. I made the following change to make it more tolerant of other "User" web names:

  107,108c107,108
  <       # Get the line with Users.TwikiGuest and add the new line after it.
  <       $notifyText =~ m/(.+Users.TWikiGuest.+)/;
  ---
  >       # Get the line with .TwikiGuest and add the new line after it.
  >       $notifyText =~ m/(.+\.TWikiGuest.+)/;
  

• The distribution includes a directory called "template". It should be "templates"
• The instructions for installation don't include a couple of steps:
  1. Add the contents of templates/view.pattern.tmpl.example to templates/view.pattern.tmpl
  2. Add the button to the toolbar in templates/viewtoolbar.pattern.tmpl. I put the following at the end of the line defining the buttons:

     <span class="patternButton">%TMPL:P{"subscribe"}%</span>
     

-- DiabJerius - 29 Sep 2006

An interesting behavior I got was it allowed TWikiGuest to subscribe to pages. It appears that on my wiki (running TWiki-4.0.4-3, Wed, 06 Jul 2006, build 10807) the call to TWiki::Func::isGuest() returns false and the call to TWiki::Func::getWikiUserName() returns

 Main.TWikiGuest 

 $userName =~ /.TWikiGuest/ 

-- RickMach - 30 Sep 2006

Here is another suggested improvement. When you get the subscribe error, have it take you back to the topic you were viewing instead of the webhome of users. You can login from every page there is no need to move over to the user web. If you move them over there, it seems like a much more inconvenient place to be.

-- RickMach - 01 Oct 2006

I would also update the template for the 'Subscribe' button to include an accesskey of 'S' and put a ampersand before the S to have hotkeys work just like the other buttons.

-- RickMach - 01 Oct 2006

Thank you all for the input. I'm going to start working on this issues as soon as my (our) TWiki homepage has been released. Should be tomorrow...

-- MarkusBajones - 01 Oct 2006

Here is another suggestion but I'm not sure I know how to do it. Currently when you subscribe to a page, it just waits a short time, reloads the page, and there is no feedback to the user that it worked unless you go to the 'Notifications' page. I wonder if there is a way to temporarily put a message at the top of the topic after you subscribe that indicates the subscribe was successful. The message could just remain until the user leaves the page they subscribed to. Maybe you could set the BROADCASTMESSAGE variable for just that page reload?

-- RickMach - 01 Oct 2006

Oh, I do want to say this is a great addition. I have already got it up on our wiki with all the changes I suggested except the BROADCASTMESSAGE one. Thanks for your work on this!

-- RickMach - 01 Oct 2006

One of our users suggested that when you click on the 'subscribe' button, have it redirect you to the WebNotify page. That way you get feedback (by looking) that it did what you expected and you can get back to the page with the back button. You could do this in lieu of a message at the top of the page I suggested. I went ahead and changed the one line of code in our local implementation to do that for the time being.

-- RickMach - 02 Oct 2006

In looking over MailerContrib, I noticed it has an API that is intented for other plugins to use to interact with the WebNotify page. I think that might be a better approach for this plugin in that it would reuse code that already existed and insulate this plugin's code from any changes to the format of the WebNotify page (like was just introduced but it was minor change that I don't think breaks this plugin). Thoughts?

-- RickMach - 07 Oct 2006

I was just going to ask the same question.....

-- CrawfordCurrie - 08 Oct 2006

I'm going to look over it and upload it with the rest of the changes as soon as possible.

-- MarkusBajones - 10 Oct 2006

Markus, could you post a summary of the changes in the new version 1.1? Thanks!

-- RickMach - 27 Oct 2006

This would be really useful at TWiki.org, particularly in the Support web - I frequently answer questions there and nobody replies, most likely because they never saw the answer. It would also help TWiki with SharePointVsTWiki.

-- RichardDonkin - 28 Oct 2006

To add SubscribeAddOn compatibility to NatSkin, I modified NatSkin's WebTopicActions topic as follows:

%STARTINCLUDE%
%IFDEFINEDTHEN{"%WIKINAME%" as="TWikiGuest"}%
<a href="%NATLOGINURL%" rel="nofollow" accesskey="l" title="%MAKETEXT{"Login to [_1]" args="<nop>%WIKITOOLNAME%"}%">%TMPL:P{"LOG_IN"}%</a>
| <a href="%SCRIPTURLPATH{"view"}%/%TWIKIWEB%/TWikiRegistration" accesskey="r" title="%MAKETEXT{"Register on [_1]" args="<nop>%WIKITOOLNAME%"}%">%MAKETEXT{"Register"}%</a>
%ELSEDEFINED%
[[%WIKIUSERNAME%][%SPACEOUT{%WIKINAME%}%]]
<a href="%NATLOGOUTURL%" rel="nofollow" accesskey="" title="%MAKETEXT{"Logout of [_1]" args="<nop>%WIKITOOLNAME%"}%">(<em>%TMPL:P{"LOG_OUT"}%</em>)</a>
| <a href="%SCRIPTURLPATH%/subscribe%SCRIPTSUFFIX%/%$nopWEB%/%$nopTOPIC%" title="%MAKETEXT{"Add topic to notification list"}%" rel="nofollow">%MAKETEXT{"Subscribe to Topic"}%</a>
%FIDEFINED% <!-- -->
<div class="natUserActions">%USERACTIONS%</div>%STOPINCLUDE%

To fit the space, I moved the "Print" link into the main body. In view.nat.tmpl:

%TMPL:DEF{"contentheader"}%
<div style="float:right;"><a href="%SCRIPTURLPATH{"view"}%/%BASEWEB%/%BASETOPIC%?skin=print.nat" rel="nofollow" accesskey="p" title="%MAKETEXT{"Print this page"}%"> %ICON{"printtopic"}% %MAKETEXT{"Printer-Friendly"}%</a></div>
<div class="natBreadCrumbs">%BREADCRUMBS{separator="<span class='natSep'>&#187;</span>"}%</div>%TMPL:END%

I hope this is useful to anyone who's looking to make similar adjustments.

-- CristosLianidesChin - 28 Nov 2006

Hi, I downloaded the SubscribeAddOn version 1.10 zip file but it doesn't work. Although the zip file is zip incorrectly and I have placed the appropriate files in the right places with the correct permissions. I also followed the detailed instructions to edit the templates/view.pattern.tmpl. But for some reasons, twiki doesn't seem to recognize that the plugin is there. Can someone help?

-- NamLe - 23 Jan 2007

I just downloaded the zip file. I can unpack it properly. There is a packaging error since there is an extra top level directory. If you can;t download the zip file completely, I suggest to try from a different computer and/or network. I have not installed the plugin, so I can't comment on that.

-- PeterThoeny - 24 Jan 2007

I have yet to upgrade but as you can see above, 1.0 is working for me on TWiki 4.05. I also listed above some changes I made to the 1.0. You might give that version a try to see if there is any difference in behavior on your system.

-- RickMach - 24 Jan 2007

Hi, Where can you get Ver. 1.0? If you can give me a link that would be wonderful. Thanks.

-- NamLe - 25 Jan 2007

Thank you for a great add-on! Our users have been clamoring for this feature. I modified the logic slightly to handle our situation when there is no TWikiGuest line. I will post the diffs.

Question? Should it be checking for a lock on WebNotify or on the Topic being subscribed?

-- CraigMeyer - 29 Jan 2007

It's possible to "unsubscribe" to topic with this plugin ?

-- YannickPavard - 25 Feb 2007

Some comments on current zip:

• It holds some Mac OSX related files, which were better left out
• It includes a toplevel subdirectory, "SubScribeAddon" which were better removed

Archive:  SubscribeAddOn.zip
   creating: SubscribeAddOn/
  inflating: SubscribeAddOn/.DS_Store
   creating: __MACOSX/
   creating: __MACOSX/SubscribeAddOn/
  inflating: __MACOSX/SubscribeAddOn/._.DS_Store
   creating: SubscribeAddOn/bin/
  inflating: SubscribeAddOn/bin/subscribe
   creating: SubscribeAddOn/data/
   creating: SubscribeAddOn/data/TWiki/
  inflating: SubscribeAddOn/data/TWiki/SubscribeAddOn.txt
  inflating: SubscribeAddOn/data/TWiki/SubscribeAddOn.txt,v
  inflating: SubscribeAddOn/gpl.txt
   creating: SubscribeAddOn/lib/
  inflating: SubscribeAddOn/lib/.DS_Store
   creating: __MACOSX/SubscribeAddOn/lib/
  inflating: __MACOSX/SubscribeAddOn/lib/._.DS_Store
   creating: SubscribeAddOn/lib/TWiki/
  inflating: SubscribeAddOn/lib/TWiki/.DS_Store
   creating: __MACOSX/SubscribeAddOn/lib/TWiki/
  inflating: __MACOSX/SubscribeAddOn/lib/TWiki/._.DS_Store
   creating: SubscribeAddOn/lib/TWiki/Contrib/
  inflating: SubscribeAddOn/lib/TWiki/Contrib/.DS_Store
   creating: __MACOSX/SubscribeAddOn/lib/TWiki/Contrib/
  inflating: __MACOSX/SubscribeAddOn/lib/TWiki/Contrib/._.DS_Store
  inflating: SubscribeAddOn/lib/TWiki/Contrib/Subscribe
  inflating: __MACOSX/SubscribeAddOn/lib/TWiki/Contrib/._Subscribe
  inflating: SubscribeAddOn/lib/TWiki/Contrib/Subscribe.pm
   creating: SubscribeAddOn/templates/
  inflating: SubscribeAddOn/templates/oopsnotify.tmpl
  inflating: SubscribeAddOn/templates/view.pattern.tmpl.example

-- SteffenPoulsen - 19 Apr 2007

I finally got around to releasing the SubscribePlugin, which provides the same functionality as this add-on but without requiring modifications to templates and without modifying system files outside of the APIs. It is also correctly packaged and is tracked in subversion. I recommend obsoleting this add-on (edit the SubscribeAddOn topic, and change that TopicClassification to ObsoleteAddOn) and focus on extending SubscribePlugin instead. Thanks for all the good work, Markus!

-- CrawfordCurrie - 25 Apr 2007