By Mark H on Tuesday, 25 February 2014
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Hi guys, I've been spending a great deal of time over the last few weeks planning the design of my new website. However, there is one thing that could make life so much easier.

How about an option to have just one of your components (EasySocial seems the most logic, hence my post here) handle all of the email notifications for your other products?

In the same way that you can have ES handling profiles and avatars, it would be great and a lot less hassle if we could have ES doing the same for email notifications.

It would be so good if my users were able to subscribe to daily and weekly digests of what has been going on across the site. A single email would show EasyBlog, EasyDiscuss and EasySocial community updates, all in one place.

If you added the ability to include new joomla articles (selectable by category), this could cater for core Joomla and CCK article updates to.

To take things even further, why not include an SDK so that third-party developers can push publish and push their updates through the same system? It makes sense if all email notification activity could be handled in a single extension and ES is the best candidate IMHO.

The SDK could let the developers choose to have an email send immediately (an important notification), or have it included in the daily or weekly digest.

This would be one of the strongest selling points (as if more were needed) to make EasySocial the must have Joomla community extension. If you like, charge for it as an add-on, I'd pay, but I think including it would be better, as I think third-party develops would flock to support it, as it's less hassle for them and they'll be getting I undated with requests from us to support it.

Just a thought!
Mark,

This is a great idea and it is also part of our roadmap. However, it's really tricky because not only we have to update EasySocial, we also have to update EasyBlog and when updating EasyBlog, we also need to make sure that users without EasySocial, is still able to generate emails within EasyBlog itself
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Tuesday, 25 February 2014 23:08
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Mark wrote:

Mark,

This is a great idea and it is also part of our roadmap.

Excellent news

However, it's really tricky because not only we have to update EasySocial, we also have to update EasyBlog and when updating EasyBlog...

Yes, I can well imagine, but I know you guys are up to the challenge!

...we also need to make sure that users without EasySocial, is still able to generate emails within EasyBlog itself

I have a solution for you

Why don't you take the opportunity to create a new Joomla plugin with two versions?

A Light Version

  1. The light version would be free of charge, but would only work with Stackideas products
  2. It would take over all notification duties for EasyBog, EasySocial, EasyDiscuss and all or your other current and future products.
  3. You allow all existing users to tick a box in their product to switch over to the new plugin (can I name it EasyMail Light? )
  4. For people who are not ready to switch, you retain the old email functionality for a few major versions, in order to allow them to make the switch in their own time
  5. You provide a simple email template, with basic customisation options


A Pro Version (EasyMail Pro )

  1. The Pro version would support notifications from third-party extensions
  2. You could charge for it in order to cover your development costs, or to provide an extra revenue stream
  3. You provide an SDK to third-party developers so that they can provide support. They could also charge a fee should they wish, but my guess is that they will and that would be a good thing (IMHO), as it will motivate them to provide support (essential).
  4. Developers only provide the data into the plugin (no HTML formatting etc), including the ability to present substitution fields for message customisation, which would be applicable to the data stored. For example, a shopping cart developer could let you put {OrderNumber:Value} anywhere in their order confirmation email template to have the actual order number displayed (look at the admin email and customer email functionality of RSForms for a good example of this in use).
  5. You provide a small selection of email templates, with more advanced customisation options. Maybe users or developers would be able to create and save their own templates/presets?


I would pay for this!!!

(sorry for another long post by the way!)
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Wednesday, 26 February 2014 01:54
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Haha, we don't really want to create another extension because our hands are really full right now
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Wednesday, 26 February 2014 02:44
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I understand (fully). EasySocial must be taking up all of your time, I hope you can put what you can into EasySocial - it's so good as it is anyway.

Off to install RC1
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Wednesday, 26 February 2014 02:49
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Yep, it is and we're still trying to fine tune the process of quicker releases. EasySocial 1.2 is a major development milestone as we have actually added more than 600 new features and improvements
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Wednesday, 26 February 2014 11:14
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