On a community site like the Commons, it is a balancing act between social interaction and too much email. The Common’s approach is to set reasonable limits on email while giving members the ability to personalize the volume of email notifications they receive. This page highlights the sources of email and how to manage it.
Announcements Group
All site-wide announcements and site updates are posted to the announcements group. All members who are registered with this group will receive the update and have a chance to respond. An announcement will also appear on the home page. You can go into the groups from your member profile or directly to the group directory. Once there you can change your email status by clicking “change” and selecting a different setting. You can also subscribe and unsubscribe to the group.
Personal Notifications
Managing your personal notifications is an important part of your participation in the Commons. We give you full control over the frequency with which you receive email notifications. The challenge is that every alert, forum or group you subscribe to will generate a notification every time a message is posted. Thankfully it is easy to turn the notification preferences up or down as you desire. Click the header link above to see some tips and instructions for managing your notifications. To modify your personal email preferences, make sure you are logged in and go to your member profile. You can get there by selecting: [community > membership]. You can also get there by hovering your cursor over the “Welcome [Your Name]” link in the upper right corner of any page. Your profile settings will appear. In both cases, select: [Settings > Email]. Make the appropriate changes. Just know that limiting your email settings will result in fewer opportunities to interact with peers.
Forum Subscriptions
Forums play an instrumental role in the Common’s discussions and interactions. There are public forums, private forums and hidden forums. When you join a forum, you will automatically receive updates and notifications via email from the forum. The forum owner sets a default email setting. Members who have joined the forum can subscribe or unsubscribe to the forum.
Favorites & Filters
The favorites button allows you to “filter” an activity stream post or a forum topic. You will receive emails every time something is posted in response to that activity post or forum topic. You can view all of your activity favorites by going into your member profile, and selecting: [activity > favorites]. You will see the activity posts you have selected to date. Likewise, to see forum topics that you have marked as “favorite” go to your profile and select: [forum > favorites]. To stop these “favorite” emails you can go to that activity post or forum topic and click the “remove favorite” button. You can also select the “remove favorite” button by going into your membership profile and selecting: [activities > favorites] or [forum > favorites].
Site Feeds
If you prefer to get updates from the Commons via RSS feed you can subscribe to a variety of feeds. You will need an RSS reader to get the updates. To set up your RSS feed, go to the main Activity Stream page [Main menu > Community > Activity]. You will find an “RSS” link at the top of the community Activity Stream. Clicking this link will take you to the feed page URL, which you can add to your browser feeds or your preferred RSS reader. Most areas of the Commons generate automatic RSS feeds, so you can easily hack the links to find the feeds you want simply by adding “/feed/” to the end of the URL. Go to the [join > get started] to see more examples.