Hello! I have multiple categories in my forum, and most users have subscribed to these categories with the subscription preference set to ‘Watching.’ Recently, an issue has arisen where users receive email and desktop notifications for all categories except for one particular category. This category does not send notifications to any users. I’m confused about why only this specific category is affected. Could it be due to heavy traffic in that category, or is it because it has the highest number of subscribers?

[image] Om Patil: most users have subscribed to these categories with the subscription preference set to ‘Watching.’ Well, first try to figure out how many users actually have that particular category in the “watching” list. If you have the data explorer plugin installed you can run this query -- [params] -- int :category_id SELECT cu.user_id, CASE WHEN u.admin THEN 'Admin' WHEN u.moderator THEN 'Moderator' ELSE 'Regular User' END AS user_type, CASE WHEN cu.notification_level = 3 THEN 'Watching' WHEN cu.notification_level = 2 THEN 'Tracking' WHEN cu.notification_level = 4 THEN 'Watching First Post' WHEN cu.notification_level = 0 THEN 'Muted' ELSE 'Regular' END AS notification_status, STRING_AGG(g.name, ', ') AS custom_group_names FROM category_users cu JOIN users u ON cu.user_id = u.id LEFT JOIN group_users gu ON gu.user_id = u.id LEFT JOIN groups g ON gu.group_id = g.id AND g.automatic = false WHERE cu.category_id = :category_id GROUP BY cu.user_id, u.admin, u.moderator, cu.notification_level ORDER BY cu.notification_level There can be several factors that affect notifications, starting from site settings, category security settings, rate limits, and so on. The best thing you can do is to try to investigate real-world examples of users who are not getting the notifications they should. Maybe they have reached their daily quota of emails sent? Have you investigated the logs of sent , skipped, bounced emails?

Hi @dax, I have a category with security settings where group members with trust level 1 can view and reply to topics. Only admins can create topics, and on average, 10 topics are created in this category each day. There are around 500 to 600 users subscribed to “Watching” for that category. I investigated the logs for sent, skipped, and bounced emails but didn’t find anything. The skipped emails log doesn’t show any emails related to topics in this category, and the bounced emails section says 'No Logs Found.

Are you creating the topic or moving it to the category after it’s been created? There was a bug like this a long while ago, but perhaps there’s a regression? [image] When a post is moved to a new topic by a moderator, the moved post's author is not «Watching» Bug Slowly untangling us from various split / merge bugs has been on our list for a while. @Osama can you take this? When you post a new topic it is always considered “watched” by you. So we should also force you to watch it if your new topic is a result of a split. Eg: Topic 1 (sam is watching): Sam Bob (split here) Jane New Topic 2 (bob is watching) Bob Jane

Only admins can create topics in this category, whereas subscribed users can only reply to them. The topics in this category include blogs, which are posts that all users follow.

Notifications Not Working for a Specific Forum Category

Product Support

omppatil (Om Patil) March 10, 2025, 4:22am 7

No, I’m not moving it to the category after it’s been created.The topic is created in the category itself.

Topic		Replies	Views
Urgent: help troubleshoot missing notifications for watched categories Product Support	20	4126	August 27, 2015
Watching a category by default and get mail notifications Product Support	5	1117	September 4, 2015
E-Mails only for watched categories? Product Support	4	952	September 30, 2019
Can users get emailed when a category has a new topic added to it? Product Support	12	877	December 31, 2023
Email notification settings per category Feature	4	1951	November 3, 2014

Notifications Not Working for a Specific Forum Category

Related topics