Suggestion - Watch/Monitor option

[phil_roy]

OK, I know the answer might be that the Extensions section (it’s superb by the way guys) is not an area where you choose to monitor or watch projects...but is the forge?

I found some instructions on how to track a project of forge...then had to convince the developer to add people in as people associated with the project before I could receive any notification...and then it’s not that great.

The Extensions is site is superb...it looks great and it’s going to become a huge resource. I;d really love it if a simple watch/monitor option was added that would allow me to...A) be alerted when the version number changes (I guess you’d have to start enforcing versions numbers ot be added)....or B) be alerted when a new review is added to an extension.

‘B’...I could live without and ‘A’ would be a godsend that would overcome issues that I’ve posted on here...

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... 98020.html

Thanks (and congrats to all involved)

Phil

[TheSaint]

Great idea, I was going to post something along similar lines but you've saved me all the work. Hopefully we'll see this sneak into the directory in a future update.

[dknight]

Hello Phil,

You're right The Extensions Directory is focused primarily to provide a central repository for all extensions for Joomla. It is not meant to monitor a projects status - this is handled by J! forge. Anyway, I've added your suggestions on review notification to our list and see if we can implement this.

Thanks!

[gsbe]

RSS feed works great for now:

• http://extensions.joomla.org/index.php?option=com_mt_rss

[rowanseymour]

This would be a brilliant addition to the extensions site. I've uploaded 3 extensions to the directory, and I've had to make bug fixes and feature updates on all of them since I uploaded them. It would be great if people who downloaded the extensions could find out that there were new versions by having the option to monitor the extensions.

Thanks for making this bit of the Joomla site cuz it's a great way to get one's work out there for people to use.

[Slixter]

The monitor option would be great but if that is harder to implement then how about a recently updated link like the New Extensions link that you could click on to get a list of the recently updated extensions.

--Slixter

[phil_roy]

No! Sorry for that outburst 
...my point was to have something that would come to me, rather than having to go to it. I'd really push for this "watch" idea...and while it is a lot of hard work, I'm still trying to emphasise the idea over a compromise like the one you mention.....if that's OK?

Phil

[rowanseymour]

How hard would this be to implement...

Store the "watches" i.e. userid / extensionid pairs in table. User can enable/remove their watch from the extension's page

Whenever an extension is updated, there's an option to notify watchers (default would be no notification, for minor updates etc)

If notification is selected, then send off a load of emails to everyone watching that extension

Easy

[turokthemighty]

Why not just have a RSS feed for each Extension, it would take care of all of these problems.
I think it would be incredibly useful.
As a developers, we would be able to the status of our extensions on the page. This would show our users that extensions.joomla.org is important and encourage people to write reviews and rate the extensions.
Thank you very much,
Taras

[phil_roy]

This is an old thread but it is great that a post has revived it as I was thinking abput this again today. I'm not into the RSS idea either sorry....that would mean RSS feeds for all the different components I have installed? No thanks.

Plus which, I have them installed....I'm not wanting to read the latest user review...I just want an email that says "A new version of component XYZ has been posted. XYZ version x.xx has just been released".

A lot of sites do offer that service for their components, but I still find myself abput once a month (today in fact, that's why it popped into my head) doing a run around of a few websites for components that I have bookmarked just to see if there has been a new release.

As mentioned at the beginning, if I could just get a brief email telling me (after I set the extensions area to "watch" an extension) that would be great. I'm fairly sure the new "favourites" feature doesn't do this.

Cheers,

Phil

[turokthemighty]

Yeah,
I think with RSS you would be notified when the content item is changed.
I don't really mean the comments, although that would be good for the developer of the extension.
If the version # changed, I think RSS feed would show that too.
Usually, I put version changes in my Extension description & version number in extension title.
Doing this would basically be a quick way to resolve monitoring/subscription request, but definately a complete monitoring/subcription option would be terrific. But I think they could work together anyway, so RSS first(because it's quicker?)
thank you,
taras

[phil_roy]

Still disagree sorry...it's not what I was suggesting in the initial post. I don't want to subscribe to 19 RSS feeds. I also like the option simply to add a notify option for components I see that I think "hmm.....that looks good...not quite there yet, but I'd be keen to know when they do some more."

A nice basic email to me is what I'm still hoping for.

Phil

[turokthemighty]

I got an idea for you...
This is abit crazy because I'm getting myself into uncessary work but what the hell...
If you agree with me that RSS is a great idea, I'll write a joomla admin module that will take a list of all Modules, components & mambots installed in your Joomla & show whenever there is update to any one of these modules, right in your Joomla admin panel.
What do you think?
Taras

[phil_roy]

No! Sorry, not trying to be rude, but it is missing the point. A lot of components have that built in...or I can go to the install section when logged in and click on their web addresses to check.

I'm talking about the times when I'm not surfing...when I'm not logged in to Joomla but doing other things. On the Mamboserver system, you'd get an email if there was a new version of something.

You're also assuming the only thing we want to be informed about are components we have installed. As I mentioned, now and then I come across a component in the extensions area that looks interesting, that I *don't* want to use and *don't* want to be subscribed to a related RSS feed......but if I got an email 1, 2 or 3 months later that simply told me it was updated, I'd go back and take another look and give it more consideration, and see if it was at a point I wanted to use it.

Cheers,

Phil

[turokthemighty]

Hey Phil,
The funny thing is that I'm not disagreeing with you, infact I agree that it would be terrifict to have a watch/monitor option, but the reality is that it requires alot of work to write something like that. RSS would not do the job exactly the same way but it would be much quicker to implement.
It's not a solution to your request, but it's much closer then nothing.

Thanks Phil,
Taras

[phil_roy]

But that's the point...there isn't "nothing" at the moment...there's an RSS feed there already....it's just for all extenstions and not component specific like my suggestion.

Phil

[torkil]

I just posted an idea related to this: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,121114.0.html

I think notifications are great, but I also think it would be great to get visual alerts in your administration system as well, something like this:


Component nameYour versionLatest version
The cool gallery component1.41.4
The nifty newsletter component2.1b2.1c
The fine shop component5.2.25.3


If it was possible to query the extensions directory (or the forge) for this kind of info, it would be very useful. I could then make a list of components to monitor and upgrade them on each of my sites as soon as I saw a new version was available. Security-wise this would be a step forward as well, since people would keep their installations more up to date.

[fabs]

well- to have this versioning in your admin panel would of course require all extenion devs to integrate versioning system which many won't be doing.

At least we now have the recently updated list.
If that list would finally have its rss feed i would be more than happy! Although subscribing to a single extension via rss might be interesting for many users as well.
If you like the Email solution better you could always subscribe to that rss feed via feedblitz and then get it emailed instead of feeded through an rss account, couldn't you?

So I think the RSS is much more flexible and easy to implement.
And devs already told me on this feed that more rss support was coming. the only question reamining is  WHEN... t'has been quite a while since those features have been requested. The first request for a recently updated rss feed was in March 2006 I think...

well- patience is a virtue and after all it is all opensource and a great project with an amazing amount of work involved to build SUCH a thing in only one year!!!

let's give the extension site guys a thumbs up!

[phil_roy]

Can I just say that (like all good threads) you're discussing something that is completely different to the suggestion that I started this post with 

My idea was not so complex. If you take a look at something such as versiontracker.com....I can find a piece of software and simply tell the site to watch it for me. Every time the owner of the software alters their entry and updates the version number, an email gets sent out saying there is a new version available.

I wasn't advocating anything as complex as has been suggested by Torkil.

Phil