new feature: email notifications

[squarepusher]

You may notice if you're on the home page (or any other non-message board page), a "login" link exists in the maroon nav bar (or a "logout" link, if you are logged into the non-message board portion of Brewerfan.net).

 

Up until now, the Brewerfan.net site accounts had pretty much no use, as we didn't have any features that required personalization. We are now pleased to offer the ability to email you upon new content being updated on the site, including:

 

- Articles

- News

- Daily Brews

- Power 50s

- General Site Updates

- Transactions (which can be filtered by the team(s) in the Brewers organization which you care about)

 

If you've created a Brewerfan.net site account in the past but don't remember your user name or password, there are now facilities to retrieve them which are available from the login screen.

 

Once you're logged in, click on the "profile" link in the maroon nav bar. You can edit which email notifications you'd like to receive there. The "profile", "login", and "logout" links will show only on non-message board pages.

 

IMPORTANT: Your ezBoard message board account login is a _different_ login from the Brewerfan.net site accounts which are stored in the Brewerfan.net database. Since our message boards are hosted by a completely different service on a completely different site, this is unfortunately the case.

 

In the future we hope to add new features which utilize personalization such as this. Hopefully, those of you who can't browse at work but can receive email can benefit from this new feature.

[1992casey]

This is a really good idea. A couple of questions:

 

1. Is there a privacy policy posted? Actually, this would be a site that would be among the least of my concerns, but it's always nice to see one. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

 

2. What does this offer in comparison to your RSS feature? Is the RSS feature still around? Right now, I'm not seeing the RSS thinger down in the corner of my Firefox browser.

[squarepusher]

[ 1. Is there a privacy policy posted? Actually, this would be a site that would be among the least of my concerns, but it's always nice to see one. ]

 

Can you give me an example of one? I'd surely put one on there, so no one gets scared off.

 

[ 2. What does this offer in comparison to your RSS feature? Is the RSS feature still around? Right now, I'm not seeing the RSS thinger down in the corner of my Firefox browser. ]

 

If you go to the home page, the RSS feature should appear in firefox. I think it must have gotten removed from the EZBoard pages. I'll put it back there....

 

The email notifications will also notify people of transactions, which we aren't doing through RSS. We'll also be sending out newsletters every now and then which will only be available via email. Also, many people don't know what RSS even is, or how they would go about setting up an easy way to receive feeds.... not to mention the fact that many companies either completely block port 80 (the web port) or perhaps web access to Brewerfan.net.

 

It's an easier way to push content via email than to have users pull content via RSS... not to mention, it's less demanding on the server.

[1992casey]

I usually only see these privacy policies when I sign up for stuff. Way back when, for instance, I would have read ezBoard's.

 

If I find one in particular that could be a good model, I'll post it. In the meantime, a Google search for 'privacy policy' pops up a ton of them. I'd guess most are way too complex for what this site would probably need. As a matter of fact, I wish more of these could stick to a couple brief paragraphs or a short list.

 

I think these would be people's main concerns:

 

1. Assurance that e-mail addresses wouldn't be shared with advertisers or be published on a web page where spammers could collect them. If there's any intention of doing something like this people should be able to opt in or out.

 

One thing that drives me nuts on some sites: they ask if you want to receive e-mails from 'partners', then have the checkbox or radio button already selected for you. It should be the other way around; people miss that.

 

2. Giving people a choice about any personal information that might be posted in any member directory. I certainly wouldn't be concerned about people in this community, but of course, being on the Web, information becomes available to the whole world.

 

Here's my general comfort level around the Internet. I don't put my real name in these directories. A nickname suffices. I usually give a general indication of where I live. If people can e-mail me through a form, I'm comfortable with that. Likewise, I understand that if I use that form to e-mail someone, s/he'll have my e-mail address at that point. Of course, that should be made clear to people who don't automatically figure that out. And it's good to allow people to opt out of that.

 

You might want to look into something about being over or under the age of 13. I don't know that this site would need do anything different in regard to age, but some sites exclude kids from certain types of e-mails they might send?mainly advertising. I notice some signups simply have checkboxes where you can say "under 13" or "over 13"; I don't know where they go from there.

 

This might be better discussed in another thread, but I'd like to know more about RSS: what it is, and how it works. I only have a vague idea. All I really understand is that I signed up for it and have some new bookmarks to read because of it. Maybe that's all I need to know? http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

[squarepusher]

I've added a privacy policy to the "create user" screen. It's very short, but to the point. Basically, it says you will NEVER receive email from Brewerfan.net unless you opt in.

 

Yeah, you can definately do the RSS thing with Firefox, but that entails you looking at a subfolder in your bookmarks directory and see what's updated.

 

I use Mozilla's mail client called "Thunderbird", which allows you to monitor RSS Feeds. It goes to those feeds at specified intervals and notifies you as to what's new. It's pretty sweet, as it eliminates me having to go to different sites to see what's new, and is active so that it shows me a list of folders and tells me how many articles are "unread", just like most email clients do with email.

[1992casey]

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Any information you provide to Brewerfan.net will not be shared with any partners or third parties without your consent. Email addresses collected are not publicly displayed anywhere on the site. Email Addresses are collected solely for the reason of uniquely identifying you, and delivering content that you optionally can choose. By default, you will receive no email from Brewerfan.net. To opt into notifications from the site, click the "profile" link after you have been logged into the site.

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This looks very good and to the point. Are first and last names shared anywhere on the site? Can we opt in and out of that via the profile?

 

I spent an entire day trying stuff out in Thunderbird because I really wanted to use it. But I found it didn't do a few things that I absolutely depend on in Eudora. I figured I'd fire up Thunderbird the few times I wanted to send an e-mail with decent HTML; Eudora absolutely mangles it.

 

It sounds like Thunderbird is the way to go for RSS, though. If I can set up the program to never check my e-mail automatically, I'd keep it running for just that one purpose.

[squarepusher]

[ This looks very good and to the point. Are first and last names shared anywhere on the site? Can we opt in and out of that via the profile? ]

 

The only place first names and last names are shared on the site are when people submit articles, since we tie a user account to an article. Other than that, the only person who can see names is me.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Quote:

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The only place first names and last names are shared on the site are when people submit articles, since we tie a user account to an article. Other than that, the only person who can see names is me.

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If I start getting Khalid Ballouli-related spam, I know who I'm coming after...http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/roll.gif

[squarepusher]

Hey, if you sign up for article updates, and I feel compelled to write countless articles about Khalid Ballouli, you have no one to blame but yourself. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

[1992casey]

Brian,

 

This is really slick how you have this set up. Your really detailed e-mail update checklist makes it really clear what we're getting.

 

Thanks!

[Ulice Payne]

Very nice idea, Brian. I'm looking forward to those Power 50 notifications!