Notify users of new topic, but only if that topic is from moderators

When a moderator posts a new topic to a certain category, I’d like my users to be notified over email.

Is there a way to do that?

Right now, users can select various options, such as getting notified of all new topics, replies to their posts, etc. I’d like to be able to allow them to get notifications for new topics, but only the really important new topics that I create as the moderator (admin would be ok too)–that way they can get notified of the extra important posts, but not get their inboxes flooded.

The closest way I can think of is to put the users into a group, and then send a direct message to that group. The problem with this approach is that it is important to me for the post to be part of the category, and function just like other posts in the category. A direct message does not seem to do that.

Hello,

Yes you can create a group but instead you can create a topic and pin it Globally or use create a banner topic. This is done via the admin wrench on the topic :wrench:

You could also add staff colour should it be an important staff post.

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Thanks, but the key thing here is that my users will get email notification of the topic (and only notifications of topics that I as the moderator create). Would pinning a topic do that?

(sorry if I wasn’t clear before that I am talking about notifications over email here)

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Follow-up on this as I’m seeing an important need for this with my users.

We have categories where I would not advise users to select the “Watching” option for getting email notifications, because getting an email notification of all new topics in the category would be too much.

But when I as the moderator have an important message that I want to communicate to the users in a category, I want to be able to create a topic and have them receive an email notification of it.

Is this possible? If it needs to be done in a theme / plugin, any advice on the first steps to do that?

No, there’s no way to do this per-topic. You’d need a distinct category where you post important moderator updates, etc, and users would need to watch that category.

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I’ve always wondered why we can’t have something like an @everyone, usable by admins, which would notify every user.

The advantage is that each user would receive (or not receive) that notification based on their preferences. Just as if I literally @-mentioned every user of the instance, one by one…

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