How does one subscribe to ALL posts/categories?

Is there a way to subscribe to all posts/categories? I’ve noticed that if I subscribe to a parent category I only get notifications for posts in the parent category and not any of the sub categories. Is there a way to set it to that I would get notifications from all sub categories? Similarly is there a setting for the user to get notifications for all new categories automatically?

If you get a notification for everything, notifications then mean nothing.

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Well that’s my choice right? I want all notifications - is there a way to get it? As the moderator (atleast in the beginning) I want to see all posts across the forum, is there some setting I can enable to see all posts?

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In your profile/options/categories add all the categories and sub-categories in the Watching box

I did that for the parent categories hence my question. It doesn’t subscribe me to the sub categories and it’s too many to put in individually.

Looks like there no setting so I would like to request a setting to allow users to subscribe to ‘all’ which them subscription to all categories (within permission rights) and possibly and option to subscribe to all sub categories. So I can pick a category and then I want to see all activity within the category and sub categories. I know this feature would be loved my many users who wants to track activity within a section of the forum.

For that matter I know if atleast 4 users on the SmartThings forum that would love the all option as they track EVERY post.

@codinghorror would it possible for either of the two options above?

I know this is not what you asked, but why do you have so many sub-categories? It’s recommended to start with only a limited number of categories in order not to confuse people. I mean, if you have too many sub-categories to be able to enter them manually into your tracked category preferences, then you really have heaps, right?

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You can look at https://meta.discourse.org/new and see all the posts you haven’t read. That’s what I do. And it’s tons easier than the notifications interface.

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Migrating a discussion forum and these were required to keep it manageable/organized. Will revisit over time and adjust as required.

That aside, as I had mentioned I know many folks who wants to track everything on the forum or ATLEAST want to track a category and all sub categories to it, there should be an easier way to track all sub categories.

H’mm good point, would that be all new posts or just new posts to categories I’ve subscribed?

What does this option do?

default email mailing list mode
Send an email for every new post by default.

Is this for every new post or just categories that folks have subscribed to? If it’s categories wouldn’t this happen by default if they’ve subscribed to those categories? It’s not very clear what’s the scope of this option.

“Every new post” is literal every. All the posts :allthethings:.

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Great so this would be the next best solution is to enable mailing list mode to get eMail on every new post, but it won’t include replies right?

I still wish Discourse had an option to subscribe to all sub categories, would make life so much easier.

Every post is, like, EVERY. Batteries replies included.

Well, we have a shit ton of options already on user interface and admin, and this is the first time I see this request. Maybe in the future, maybe not.

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Have you considered turning some most of these sub-categories into tags? (tags can also be watched, but have the advantage of being more subtle, not obstructing new visitors to the forum)

One suggestion would be a simple check box next to the watching/tracking/muted categories input boxes:

Include sub-categories

It would be simple enough not to clutter the UI but gives a very powerful feature to let users access sub categories.

Straight and clear to the point

Yes, we have a whole separate set of tags setup, the cross matrix is enormous and discourse has been very useful in allowing the flexibility to create categories, sub categories and tags to organize the information/users/posts. The previous forum was a total disaster because we couldn’t do this.

I’m still trialing this but so far I’m very impressed with the ability to organize information. Just a few tweaks needed

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It’s all new posts you can see.

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I also want this feature. I am a participant in Discourse with low volume. I do not plan on manually checking in daily (the volume is low) and new categories may be created by the admins. I would like to be notified of anything that happens but at the moment (from this thread) it sounds like my best option is to subscribe to all categories and hope that the admins don’t add any new categories. This doesn’t seem like a very scalable solution to me and kind of suggests that Discourse is not a good choice for low-volume discussion forums?

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Have you considered mailing list mode?

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Ah, I didn’t know about that option. It feels like it should be in Notifications, rather than email? Though, I can see how it has some overlap. As a user, when I went looking for details on how I could receive more notifications, I looked in the notifications settings, not in the email settings.

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