For the Tapatalk issue, I would recommend making your own mobile app, due to Tapatalk's horrible privacy issues and lack of good support. In fact, I asked Tapatalk if they would be interested in supporting wpForo. As it turns out, they informed me that they recently dropped support for bbPress and will not be adding support for ANY WordPress-based forums.
At first, the thought of building your own app sounds daunting, but really you can do it with a plugin called AppPresser. I'm not affiliated with them, just a very happy customer. I'm working on an app for my forum right now and AppPresser is pretty doggone awesome. You basically install it in WordPress, then build your app, and manage it right in your WordPress site.
@wendell @robert another possibility is the integration of OneSignal for the notification system. I'd like to try this, but would need some form of detail around hooks wpForo uses when replying, posting, commenting, likes etc.
I've been looking at having a Telegram group just for forum users and then having a bot post the forum updates to the Telegram group. It's a bit of a one size fits all solution but it would be a push notification.
For the Tapatalk issue, I would recommend making your own mobile app, due to Tapatalk's horrible privacy issues and lack of good support. In fact, I asked Tapatalk if they would be interested in supporting wpForo. As it turns out, they informed me that they recently dropped support for bbPress and will not be adding support for ANY WordPress-based forums.
At first, the thought of building your own app sounds daunting, but really you can do it with a plugin called AppPresser. I'm not affiliated with them, just a very happy customer. I'm working on an app for my forum right now and AppPresser is pretty doggone awesome. You basically install it in WordPress, then build your app, and manage it right in your WordPress site.
@wendell @robert another possibility is the integration of OneSignal for the notification system. I'd like to try this, but would need some form of detail around hooks wpForo uses when replying, posting, commenting, likes etc.
For me, this would be perfect - at least as an option.
But does one signal just do browser notification if you have the browser open? Or will a push notification pop up on your phone even when the browser is closed?
I'm desperate to get push notifications and am prepared to pay.
@samhunter I've managed to get a working prototype of push notifications up and running. Relatively simple affair.
1. Go to pushover and create an account. There's a one time charge, but very cheap
2. Install Pushover on your mobile device
3. Go to https://ifttt.com and create an RSS feed that will send to Pushover (essentially, you are going to use the RSS feeds from your forum)
4. Register the application
5. Post a message on the forum
6. IFTTT delivers the message to your device
This is in simplistic form. I can provide more detailed instructions if anyone is interested, but I do have this working on https://dev.phenomlab.com
There is also a "teams" version of Pushover, at USD 5.00 per user, per month - useful if you want the user to get notifications as soon as they subscribe rather than have to configure their own.
GCM is also worth a read, but of course, restricted to Android devices - http://swarajsaaj.github.io/posts/android-push-gcm-notifications
One other option (which I currently leverage) is a SLACK channel where RSS feeds are posted. This then uses the push notification of the device (you need SLACK installed on the mobile device and signed into the channel, but it's not a big deal). This way, as soon as the RSS feed is updated, a push notification is generated in SLACK and sent to the user.
I'm also looking at FLOCK.
Testing that this setup works!
Yo, the solution @anonymous3542 posted works for free with Pushbullet + IFTTT! Super dope.
- Register for Pushbullet (it's free)
- Install Pushbullet on your mobile devices and web browsers
- Make an RSS Feed Applet on IFTTT.com using the Forum Topic's RSS link, and have it send a link to Pushbullet
- Done!
@samhunter I think this is limited to the browser being open - at least in my testing. GCM has an offering here https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-get-started-with-push-notifications-on-android--cms-25870
Pushbullet is another that works very well. Join also has an offering with a one time USD 5.00 charge .
One more that looks very good is pushover - https://wordpress.org/plugins/pushover-notifications/ and HTTPS://pushover.net.
There's an API and the price looks reasonable.
I use pushbullet myself but how would I get that to take notifications from the forum to a mobile device?
I liked the link but think I'd still need some integration with the forums. I'm just not enough of a developer to do that myself.
I will take a look at Join, not heard of that before. Thanks
There are plenty of good plugins but they only support notifications for new blog posts: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.hostgator.com/blog/push-notifications-wordpress/amp/
What we need is notifications on a user by user basis and for the forum topics not blog posts.
I'll end up paying some big bucks to some developer and it frustrates me because I'd rather just give the same money to the wp-foro team and everyone using the platform could benefit.
Perhaps we start a kickstarter fund or something so the wp-foro team can get done what clearly seems to be the most needed feature.
@samhunter I'm a developer myself 👍 and happy to start looking at this. Essentially, it's just an API that gets triggered when a particular function or hook in wordpress is executed.
If the wpForo guys can tell us what the hooks are, I'm more than happy to start work on this.
@robert is there a list of available hooks anywhere ?
Thanks
Sounds good. To start I'm not looking for a fully fledged app. Just need an app that handles push notifications to the app in place of, or in addition to, the current email system for each individual user - allowing them to tap the notification and be taken to the relevant forum/topic as happens with links in the email notifications.
In my mind, the app would be generic so it could be used by anyone running wp-foro. The user would put forum address, and user details into app to connect. And I guess there would be a wordpress plugin that would handle things on that side.
I guess I'm just worried about paying twice. Once to you or other developer and then for whatever app wp-foro bring out.
Trouble is it's not clear how long we may have to wait for whatever gets done in house.
What kind of cost would it be to do the bare bones app and plugin?
@samhunter you wouldn't be paying for any services I provide. There are two points I'll make here.
1. wpForo is open source and we have a great community here. I'm an advocate of open source so won't be charging . It's my way of giving something back.
2. I have a vested interest in this so I can't realistically charge you or anyone else for something I want myself .
I'll need information around the hooks though so hopefully @robert can provide insight .
