Display a site message to all users

Feature
1

As an admin, is there a way to send a message to all users? If so, how?

1 Like
2

For what purpose? Can you describe the goal, what you are trying to accomplish, with some examples?

3

@codinghorror
For the community I manage, I would like to send all the users a direct message indicating that we have new features and to check them out.

4

How about auto-subscribing users to category “blog” on sign up? You simply add the category to watched or tracked in the user preferences.
Whenever you post something in category blog, it’s being emailed via digest and it appears in notifications.

2 Likes
5

I was also thinking a global banner, the sort you would use for

This site is undergoing maintenance in 1 hour, and will be briefly down. Check status at http://example.com/status

Probably dismissable in some way.

This is better where you want to send a message to “everyone” but only those people actually visiting the site. No need to clutter everyone’s PMs up.

6 Likes
6

Here’s a good, live example from comixology.

Screenshot (68).png1469×375 36.2 KB

Hopefully this illustrates why banners like this should be used exceedingly rarely.

2 Likes
7

I would really appreciate something like this as well. Even a message that could be displayed to all users not logged in explaining the purpose of the community. I don’t want to hinder regular members with that kind of information if I don’t have to.

8

No, I strongly disagree. That is the purpose of a pinned welcome topic, which is part of the default site template. Users can clear pinned topics after they have read them.

3 Likes
9

For what it’s worth, this was not obvious to me until you said so. And very happy to not have to stare at those welcome messages all the time.

2 Likes
10

If you can think of ways to make clear pin more obvious, let me know.

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11

I have tried to click on the thumbtack icon to clear pin more times than I can count. That’d be my “don’t make me think” proposal.

Alternatively, or in addition, you could automatically clear the pin after entering the topic the first time since the last time it was pinned.

1 Like
12

I have something like this on my community groops.de. I don’t use it often, but if I do, it’s great. Indispensable.

13

Sure, that’s possible – I just wonder how many people are “clicking” on that tiny pin on phone and tablet.

14

So do both? I didn’t work it out until I saw this thread


15

What about a red ☒ clear pin link below the ★ to the left of the post title?

This might not be perfect, but in my mind it’s along the lines of what I’d expect to see. The clearing action should be available in the place I want the thing cleared from 
 rather than having to “drill down” into the post to find it at the bottom.

16

The intent is for people to read the thing before clearing it mindlessly.

17

Fair enough. Could the ☒ (or whatever) appear only after the post has been read once?

18

Something just crossed my mind. What about changing:

This topic is now pinned. It will appear at the top of its category.

to

This topic is now pinned. It will appear at the top of its category until you click the “Clear Pin” button below.

Just a thought.

19

A bit off topic here but I hope @sam can get this UI improvement, already slated, finished this week:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/im-afraid-i-un-pinned-welcome-to-meta-discourse-org/12997/3?u=codinghorror

1 Like
20

For example, I want to inform my members the time server will go down and add new features and so on.