Yes, That’s a pain point. It should rather default to the developer_emails as defined in app.yml because the dev/sysadmin is far more interested in pushing the update than website support (which could be a non-tech team altogether)
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Maybe the answer here is to change the new version emails admin setting from a toggle to a comma separated list of email addresses, defaulting to the first site admin who sets up the site in the first place.
That said, do we have rule of three? I have not heard this request from anyone else. The official contact is supposed to reach someone about important issues relating to the forum, and can forward the email to the person in charge of doing updates.
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There is a strong chance people might be unaware of the existence of this feature.
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Let’s see… by default, Discourse checks for version updates. Also by default, if a new version is available an email is sent to the contact_email address.
In the setup wizard, they are prompted to fill the contact_email field.
I guess it is true that people might not make it that far at first setup and may never return to complete that admin setting. We could be doing more to make sure Discourse nudges people so they do complete it, to make sure they are reachable for critical notifications and on their about page for urgent matters.
It’s also true that for self-hosters, an email address for the person setting up the site is provided during setup in app.yml, and so a smoother experience might indeed be to send the email to the email address in app.yml, as suggested above.
Or another idea would be to change the admin setting to specify a group to notify, default admin? That would be noisy or people stepping on each other’s toes on sites with many admins but we could add a note to the admin getting started guide to change the group in that case.
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I agree that it would be helpful if update related emails went to a developer email rather than contact_email.
(context)
The main reason being that the contact_email is listed publicly as the support email for anyone to contact for general inquiries or support.
I believe it would make more sense to link an email like that to a support ticketing system operated by non technical staff. While the critical notifications regarding the security of the Discourse instance (like security updates available) should go directly to a server admin email (ideally without needing a user account created for that email).
A webhook would be super nice also, which would make it possible to send these critical alerts to Slack, Discord etc.
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I do think we want to do something here.
This might be the lowest hanging fruit, and easiest to implement. A comma separated list of email addresses is supported, and they do not necessarily have to have accounts on the site.
We can explain how it will be used in the setup tool and in the admin guide.
Also a nice idea! Perhaps could be added as a plugin. Could you start a separate topic to suggest it?
Nice idea! This also feels like a separate feature request - can you start another topic to suggest it and explain your idea in more detail?
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