Discourse Follow

IMPORTANT WARNING: This plugin may affect whether laws that regulate social media apply to your forum. Consult legal for advice.

:discourse2: Summary Discourse Follow allows users to follow other users, list the latest topics involving them, and receive notifications when they post.
:hammer_and_wrench: Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-follow
:open_book: Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse

Screenshots

Followed users posts feed:

List of users you’re following:

Follow button on the user card and profile page:

User preferences:

follow-preferences

Admin site settings:

Configuration

User preferences

Preference Purpose
Notify me when followed Enables/disables notification when someone follows you
Notify followed user when followed Enables/disables notifications that other people receive when you follow them
Notify me when followed replies Enables/disables notifications when people you’re following reply
Notify me when followed creates topic Enables/disables notifications when people you’re following create new topics
Allow people to follow me Allow/don’t allow anyone to follow you. If you turn this preference off and you have existing followers, they’ll no longer receive notifications about your new replies/topics, you will not appear in their following users list, and your posts will not appear in their follow feed.

Changing defaults of user preferences

Each user preference that the plugin adds has a site setting counterpart that controls the default value of the preference for future users and users who have never changed any of the preferences added by the plugin.

For example, the default notify me when followed creates topic site setting controls the default value of the Notify me when someone I follow creates a topic preference. If you change that site setting, then all new signups will have that preference set to the same value as the site setting. Existing users who never changed any preferences added by the plugin will also be affected by the site setting change.

Site settings

Setting Default Purpose
discourse follow enabled True Enables/disables the plugin
follow show statistics on profile True Controls whether the “Followers” and “Following” counts are shown on the user card and profile (see screenshots above)
follow notifications enabled True Enables/disables all kinds of notifications added by the plugin (when disabled it overrides user preferences)
follow followers visible Everyone Controls who can see the followers list under user profile and the Followers count
follow following visible Everyone Controls who can see the following users list under user profile and the Following count
default notify me when followed True (see the sections related to user preferences above)
default notify followed user when followed True (see the sections related to user preferences above)
default notify me when followed replies False (see the sections related to user preferences above)
default notify me when followed creates topic False (see the sections related to user preferences above)
default allow people to follow me True (see the sections related to user preferences above)

Credits

This plugin was developed by the Pavilion team and maintained by them until October 2021 when it was promoted to an official plugin. The Discourse team (CDCK, Inc) is currently maintaining this plugin.

:discourse2: Hosted by us? This plugin is available on our Enterprise plans

Last edited by @JammyDodger 2024-06-18T15:17:12Z

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124 Likes

A post was split to a new topic: Layout of Followers/Following is now single column after update

A post was split to a new topic: Banned members cannot be Unfollowed

2 posts were split to a new topic: Using Follow API to intergrate with existing site feature

3 posts were split to a new topic: Is the Follow plugin available on the Discourse Business Plan?

“ Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse”
The installation method linked here is the “Discourse Solved Plugin”.
Where are the installation instructions specific to the follow plugin?

Those instructions are for all plugins, it’s just using the Discourse-Solved one as an example.

3 Likes

Can you make it to where each person’s followers are also visible on the user’s postbit? So every time they post, you can see their followers?

Very useful ,thank you

Should the notify when someone I follow creates a post also supposed to send emails or just an in-app notification?

yes and push notification. :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like