How can I get rid of e-mail notification for my students with every little thing I change in my course?
They are going slightly mad because they recieve a lot of e-mails wich are in genaral useless for them
Peter-Anne Wissema
Peter-Anne (how about a picture)
Exactly what are these "every little thing I change" things that are generating e-mail. If you make a post say in the course News forum and you have the forums properties set to (Yes) "Force everyone to be subscribed?:," then they are going to get an e-mail. Also, if they have posted to a forum they will be subscribed, and can easily unsubscribe if they don't want to receive further messages.
I'm working with pupils who are not that smart. When they recieve an e-mail from a forum, they'll think it is ment for them in person - when it could well be for some-one else. They will recieve a whole bunch of e-mails wich they can ignore, and that is something that will dazzle my pupils. So I would like to be able to block out e-mailnotification as a teacher.
I don't have the e-mail notifications activated here because I don't find them very practical for my purpose either.
I hope I am right when I say that the only thing I had to do to prevent all the e-mail notifications was to disable the moodle cron job.
I believe that it should be no other disadvantages than just that the e-mail notification function will stop.
If anybody else shold be aware of any other negative sides about removing the cron job, please leave a message !
Arne.
I don't know if this still applies to current versions of Moodle, but according to the following discussion, there might be negative consequences: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2485#10647
Another way of accomplishing this without turning off cron, would be to define a dummy email_to_user2 function in mod/forum/lib.php:
function email_to_user2($user, $from, $subject, $messagetext, $messagehtml="", $attachment="", $attachname="")
{
return true;
}
and then replace the line
if (! email_to_user($userto, $userfrom, $postsubject, $posttext, $posthtml)) {
by
if (! email_to_user2($userto, $userfrom, $postsubject, $posttext, $posthtml)) {
Another way of accomplishing this without turning off cron, would be to define a dummy email_to_user2 function in mod/forum/lib.php:
function email_to_user2($user, $from, $subject, $messagetext, $messagehtml="", $attachment="", $attachname="")
{
return true;
}
and then replace the line
if (! email_to_user($userto, $userfrom, $postsubject, $posttext, $posthtml)) {
by
if (! email_to_user2($userto, $userfrom, $postsubject, $posttext, $posthtml)) {
Thanks Zbigniew !
That's what I was thinking about as a possible side effect ..no neccesary cleanup and maintenence of the data base tables.
I think your method appear to be a lot safer than just leaving out the cron job.
The prinsiple as you suggest is just to "replace" the organal function for sending out mail by a dummy empty function, that will have to be declared in "mod/forum/lib.php".
But what about the call to the function for sending out mail:
"if (! email_to_user($userto, $userfrom, $postsubject, $posttext, $posthtml)) {"
This should then be changed to be a call to the new dummy function, but where is this line for the call located ?
Arne.
Excuse me for a not so smart question !
The call:
"if (! email_to_user($userto, $userfrom, $postsubject, $posttext, $posthtml)) {"
Apeared to be a part of "mod/forum/lib.php" as well.
So there should only be neccesary to edit a change at to different places in the same file ("mod/forum/lib.php")
Thanks a lot.
Arne.
Why would you be automatically subscribed to a forum by just replying to it. I think it would make more sense to be subscribed to a thread in the same manner as what happens with phpBB and invision boards.
Having the software send out automatic emails is annoying at best and for me if one person reports that email as spam my hosting account can be terminated.
I have had complaints as well for one of my courses, and I would vastly prefer subscriptions to threads in place of subscriptions to entire forums.
The other problem I have is that when people DO subscribe, they tend to respond to messages in e-mail instead of going back to the Moodle site to post their responses.
The other problem I have is that when people DO subscribe, they tend to respond to messages in e-mail instead of going back to the Moodle site to post their responses.
This is an old thread but I have been wondering if there is merit in an option for a user profile that agregates their forum e-mail posts into one digest? Perhaps this can be set to a particular time each day. Might post it to the Moodle bug site as a feature request.
Look carefully in your own profile on this very site, for example. It's there.