30 Second Guide to Subscriptions, My Content and View New Content (1 Viewer)

How to Use Subscriptions and to Find New Content
There are several places to find new content on the new Home Theater Forum:

View New Content, Content I follow and My Content

View New Content
View New Content shows all new content on the site in an “activity feed style” display. This shows you all new content regardless of if you are subscribed or have participated in any of the topics (threads). The link to new content can be found above the Recent Topics and search box on the top right of the page:



Clicking on it opens up the feed showing you all new activity on the forum:



View New Content shows all new activity on the forum regardless if you have posted or subscribed to these topics (threads). A black circle means this is a topic you have never posted in and there is new content since you have last read the thread, or you have never read it. A black star means this is a topic you have posted in and there is new content since you have last read the thread. Click on the circle or star to go to the first unread post.

In addition to the link at the top of the page, you can also access New Content through a direct link.

My Content and Content I Follow

Both My Content and Content I Follow are accessed by clicking on your name in the upper right of the screen. You can select either from the menu:



My Content is just that, a listing of topics (threads) that you have either started or contributed to. It looks exactly like the View New Content feed, the only difference is you are only seeing topics you have started or posted in. A black circle means this is a topic you have never posted in and there is new content since you have last read the thread, or you have never read it. A black star means this is a topic you have posted in and there is new content since you have last read the thread. Click on the circle or star to go to the first unread post.

Content I Follow (Subscriptions)

Content I Follow is the new name for subscriptions. This is where you go to see new content for the things you are subscribed to and modify how you are notified on each individual subscribed item. You can edit them individually or check the ones on the page you want to change. Currently only items that you are following since the site migration are here, so until you change your settings to auto follow your content, or start following new threads it will look sparse. We are working on trying to import your subscriptions from the old site. The data is being analyzed to figure out the best way to map it to the new site. Hopefully it will just be another week or two.

It is accessed by clicking on your name in the upper right of the screen and selecting Content I Follow, or clicking on the Content I Follow buttons that were just added to the top and bottom of the page next to the Forum Nav buttons.

There are several ways to follow something. At the top of a forum or topic there is a follow button.



Clicking on a follow button will add it to your subscriptions and prompt you for how you want to be notified and if you want to be seen following the topic.

You can also automatically follow topics you start of post in and have a lot of control over you subscriptions by going to the Notification Options tab in your My Settings. You can access this by either clicking on your name in the upper right of the screen, and selecting My Settings and then Notification Options, an options link on the top of the popup menu that appears when you click on your notification icon next to your name (see bottom pic), or through this direct link: Notification Options



You can auto follow topics and posts by checking the box under Topics & Posts and specifying your default notification preferences. You can change preferences for individual content by going to the Content I Follow page accessed by the link located under your name, or by clicking on the Content I Follow buttons on the top and bottom of the screen. The default email notification options are:

[*]None: You are never notified via email of new content
[*]Immediate: You are sent an email for every new post
[*]Offline: You are sent a single email the first time there is new content in a thread. No other emails will be sent after that until you revisit the site
[*]Daily Digest: A notification email sent once per day with all your notifications
[*]Weekly Digest: A notification email sent once per week with all your notifications
[/list]
Additionally you can specify what you want to receive via email and what you want to be notified of on-site. Your site notification icon is located next to your name in the upper right corner.



Clicking on it will give you a popup menu of your current notifications with links to take you your notification page or change your notification options.

NOTE: We are still working on importing your subscriptions from the old site. In the meantime feel free to subscribe to all the new continent you want.

Just a quick follow-up, if you have turned on following and been following/subscribing to threads, but your Content I Follow page is either empty or only has one or two threads in it, its because the default view acts as a queue. When you read all the new posts on a topic it is removed from the window until you have read it all. To see more of the content you are following pick a different filter:

Am I overlooking it or is the follow this topic button only available at the top of threads?

Adam, thanks. This is helpful. But I'm still confused, as I don't get update notifications for all items I follow in the menu bar item. I think I've got all the options turned on. The system is ... daunting, with many user settings and viewing perspectives

I left for vacation JUST as the new forum came online, so I'm still trying to get through the guides/questions, but...are others having issues with the "go to first unread post" feature? I posted several comments inthe thread for "Revolution, Season One" and clicked on the star to the left of the thread and it took me to the very first post...and MY first post was #96, I believe.

All threads are reset with the transition, I've found. You'll have to click the last page link to get to the latest pst, and have the forum learn that you're caught up on every thread.

Could someone help me understand what I'm doing wrong with the "view new content " feature..I browse the forums mostly by reading the latest postings instead of visiting specific sub-forums, so this feature is very useful to me.

Last time I was here it was working fine, but now after 3 or four days of absence I get the 'no content' message, and after playing with the 'filters' I only managed to pick up just a few threads of new content with the '6 month' filter, can someone tell me what is causing this behavior?

Do you have anything selected under the "Other" filter, below the time period filters?

Thanks Cameron that was it, I have no idea how the 'just items I follow' filter was activated, must have been playing with it last time and forgot all about it, I'm still getting used to this new software....

How do I find topics I started specifically?I don't see this search anywhere, also it looks like "my content" only goes back one year?

When are "daily" notifications determined and sent? That's my default. But while "immediate" caused a stream of duplicate notifications, "daily" results in almost none.

I understand now.

"Immediate" results in a notification for every post in a thread, live. The result is redundant notifications. If a single thread gets six new posts before I check it, I have six notifications. This is how Facebook used to work, a year ago, before they updated to their new, consolidated notifications system.

"Daily" sends a consolidated notification every 24(?) hours or so. If I check a thread before a full day has gone by, there will be no notification. The practical result, as I read the forum about daily in the evening, is that I get no notifications at all. "Daily" is practically the same as "None", for any reader who checks in at least daily.

The 'right' solution is an immediate, consolidated notifications system, as Facebook does. If a thread gets multiple posts, there should be a single notification for that (perhaps moved up in the queue according to latest update). (I guess people might still want "Daily", if they are infrequent readers and use the email updates.)

Hope this new forum software supports this!

Did something happen this afternoon with the notification e-mails? They used to include the entire new post; now, there is no message even when something has been posted.

I see the same behavior.

Jason_V said:

Did something happen this afternoon with the notification e-mails? They used to include the entire new post; now, there is no message even when something has been posted.

Click to expand...

After careful deliberation we decided to start sending links to new posts in subscribed threads instead of the entire post content. Now that we have increased mobile support there are more ways than ever to visit the site, so we felt it was no longer necessary to have the ability to read the forum via email as that doesn't promote posting and conversation. We apologize that this wasn't communicated in advance.

Now that makes sense, Adam, but I don't like the change. There's no way I'm ever going to respond to anything on the forum on my iPhone. I have a hard enough time typing texts and simple e-mails. Not everyone has iPads or a wi fi connected tablet or things like that which make posting easier. My Kindle Fire, for example, needs to be connected to a network...which I don't have on the bus or when I'm traveling most of the time.

At any rate, thank you for the explanation. I thought I was doing something very very wrong for a little while.

Well, I'm assuming it will also generate more hits on the site

Jason_V said:

Did something happen this afternoon with the notification e-mails? They used to include the entire new post; now, there is no message even when something has been posted.

Click to expand...

This (for me) has made following threads unusable.

There is no reference now inside the email for me to go to where I left off...if the thread ID was in there it would help...

The only thing inside the link is "goto=newpost"...all this does for me is takes me to the last post period...

Any ideas? I really liked it the way it was...

I've found that clicking the link will get you to the last post you actually read. It is useful, but it's a completely different way of keeping up with what's going on. It has taken time to understand find a new "normal," at least on my end.