Not receiving email notifications to subscribed threads.

[chscag]

All my settings seem to be correct and I've even tried resetting the applicable ones the best I can. The email problem is only happening with this particular forum so something at your end appears to be goofy and not working.

Your end, our end???? Let's face it Patrick, there's gremlins loose here and they seem to like you.

By the way, in case anyone else is following the news.... today is national election day in Canada.

[pm-r]

Your end, our end???? Let's face it Patrick, there's gremlins loose here and they seem to like you.

Agreed, but I'd say they like attacking me and goofing up some of the normal forum working things.

Any chance that I'm partially blacklisted or greylisted at your end???



- Patrick
======

[pm-r]

It looks like this can be an ongoing problem for some vBulletin users, but I don't know what if any solutions have been tried.

This is one of their more recent threads:
Some users do not received notifications or emails from subscribed threads.
Some users do not received notifications or emails from subscribed threads. - vBulletin Community Forum



- Patrick
======

[krs]

It looks like this can be an ongoing problem for some vBulletin users, but I don't know what if any solutions have been tried.

This is one of their more recent threads:
Some users do not received notifications or emails from subscribed threads.
Some users do not received notifications or emails from subscribed threads. - vBulletin Community Forum



- Patrick
======

One of these answers surprised me in that thread:

Are the users subscribed to the topics in question? (this can't be viewed in the AdminCP)

Are their email addresses accurate?

Are they active on the site when the reply is made? If so, they won't receive an email and should rely on the Notifications page of their message center.

What are their settings on their /account/notifications page? (This can't be viewed in the AdminCP)

The part I bolded - Do they really mean that one will not get email notification of a reply to subscribed thread if one at that time is "active on the site", ie looking at other threads or posts. That can't possibly be true - it wouldn't make any sense.

[chscag]

The part I bolded - Do they really mean that one will not get email notification of a reply to subscribed thread if one at that time is "active on the site", ie looking at other threads or posts. That can't possibly be true - it wouldn't make any sense.

I believe that's the way it currently works unless there has been an update to vBulletin. And why doesn't it make any sense to you? Why send someone email about a thread they're subscribed to when they are active on the site and all they need to do is check the thread?

[krs]

I believe that's the way it currently works unless there has been an update to vBulletin. And why doesn't it make any sense to you? Why send someone email about a thread they're subscribed to when they are active on the site and all they need to do is check the thread?

Well, for a couple of reasons.
For one, just because I'm either looking at something on the site or maybe starting a new topic, I would never think of checking all the threads I'm subscribed to just in case somebody replied.
Patrick is quite active on this site, so I can see him replying to a different thread while someone is replying to this thread and he not getting email notification because of this arrangement.
If one has say a dozen or so subscribed threads, is it really reasonable to expect that person to check each of those threads every time they are on the site just in case someone might have replied to one. That makes no sense to me.
Maybe this is simply why Patrick is not getting notifications.

The other reason is that I don't necessarily close this site when I'm done.
Just now, I received the email notification about your post, I clicked on the link and opened your post and them I was called away.
Came back about 45 minutes later with your post still up.
So in that scenario, I would not have received any email notifications of any subscription that somebody might have replied to during that time.

I also sometimes minimize the web page when I intend to reply soon but just have to finish something else first. Again, the software would consider me "being active on the site", so no email notification for any replies to subscribed threads.

I don't know about other members, although I'm very interested in Mac topics on this site, I don't have the time to check all my subscribed threads each time I go to this site to see if somebody replied.

[chscag]

I don't know about other members, although I'm very interested in Mac topics on this site, I don't have the time to check all my subscribed threads each time I go to this site to see if somebody replied.

That certainly is a valid reason, but not everyone is as busy as you are.

Anyway, we are drifting away from Patrick's problem. As I've told him, everything on our end looks okay. The master data base show his profile and preferences to be normal. We will keep trying to find out if there is something about his access that is causing the non email notifications.

[IWT]

For what it's worth and if it helps:

I get Notifications whether I'm on the site or not. I use the email links to get to each thread and deal with then - if I can

I then check "New Posts" and deal with any I feel capable of handling. During this time, I may receive an email Notification from a previous post I've replied to, say from yesterday.

I can either go into Mail and get the link or refresh the "New Posts" link and it will be there with the little reverse arrow thingy telling me that I am a subscriber to that thread.

And if I take a "comfort" break for 10 minutes, I leave the site open. When I come back, there may be a new email Notification awaiting my attention.

Just for information, guys

Ian

[Rod]

Patrick, obviously I know what a pain this can be as I started this thread but have you tried, I know this is a long shot, resetting all the fields in Subscription Settings and re entering them?

[IWT]

Rod's post is a perfect example of what I said above. An email Notification appeared as soon as I'd finished my post and was looking at the next one. I've even had a Notification of a post to a thread to which I am in the process of writing a reply; if someone else got their post in first.

Ian

[MacInWin]

I, too, have gotten email notifications of a change to a thread while I was entering a post for that very thread. Just like Ian. I don't think the problem is necessarily with vbulletin, or the site. I think there is something between Patrick and the website that is the cause. The tricky part is to figure out what that is. Could it be related to the fact he's pretty far back in OS releases? Something incompatible in his system or browser?

[krs]

Getting back to an earlier question I posted - is there no way for the admin or mods to check if the notification email to Patrick was actually sent out by the forum software?
That would at least limit the area where the potential problem might be.

[pm-r]

The master data base show his profile and preferences to be normal. We will keep trying to find out if there is something about his access that is causing the non email notifications.

Thanks Charlie, that would certainly be appreciated.

I will mention that I had not changed anything on my iMac when I noticed the lack of Mac-forums email notices well over a week ago now.

And to Rod,

Patrick, obviously I know what a pain this can be as I started this thread but have you tried, I know this is a long shot, resetting all the fields in Subscription Settings and re entering them?

Thanks for the suggestion Rod, but actually I did that a day or so ago. I set them to opposite what they should be and saved the settings, then when back and changed them to what they should be and save those settings.
Go to settings are still showing as they should be and were previously.

One thing I did notice in the list of subscriptions is the notification box is not checked. I don't know if it's supposed to be or not but changing them to check didn't seem to make any difference and then when I went back to look at them again they were all unchecked.

I'll try and grab a screenshot and post it here in a bit.


- Patrick

Like this:
Screen Shot 2019-10-22 at 11.40.55 AM.png

[chscag]

Getting back to an earlier question I posted - is there no way for the admin or mods to check if the notification email to Patrick was actually sent out by the forum software?
That would at least limit the area where the potential problem might be.

I've reviewed our master settings several times to make sure that everything was setup correctly. Also, about not getting notified if you're already on the site, that particular setting has been removed from the latest updates to vBulletin and no longer applies. According to the master setting, an email will be sent regardless if you're present on the site or not.

To answer your question about verifying if an email was sent to Patrick, I can not find anything that tells me one way or another. We probably will need to have the person who has been assisting us with vBulletin to look into it.

Our other Admin (Dennis) has more experience with vBulletin than I have and we will ask him also to look into it.

In the meantime @Patrick, you'll just have to check more often to see if a thread you're subscribed to has replies. I know it's an inconvenience, but for now I know of no other way.

[MacInWin]

@Patrick, none of those boxes are checked on my system, so it's not necessary to do that.