We’re making small updates to Discourse’s default email subject lines to make them appear tidier and less technical in your members’ inboxes. We’ve heard that our emails can make the community feel too technical, which can alienate members, so we hope these improvements will address those concerns in part.
In this topic, we’ll review the changes and share how you can start using this today.
What’s changed
We’ve simplified email subject lines to reduce redundant information and eliminate some of the more technical formatting.
These changes impact two general types of emails.
Emails sent from the community
These are generally account-related emails (e.g., registration emails, emails sent upon promotion to admin status, activity summaries, community chat emails, etc.).
For these emails, we have removed the [%{email_prefix}], which typically displays the community name, from the subject line, since the email is sent “From” the community.
Before this change…
After this change…
Emails sent from other members
These are generally notification emails (e.g., when someone sends you a PM, replies to a topic you are Tracking or Watching, etc.).
For these emails, we have:
- Removed the brackets around the
%{email_prefix} - Removed the
[PM]annotation from notifications generated by PMs - Removed the
[Category]annotation from topic notifications
Before this change…
After this change…
Turning on simpler email subject lines in your community
For now, this is considered an experimental change! We’re welcoming your feedback, which will help us make improvements and roll this out further.
To turn this on, head to the Upcoming changes page in your admin area (/admin/config/upcoming-changes) and find the Simple email subject item. Update the Enabled for… field to opt your site in to this new design.
If you have customized the email_subject setting or any site texts related to email subjects, turning on the Upcoming Change will not overwrite your customizations. We are updating our defaults with this change, but we don’t want to replace any custom configurations in your site. If you want to go with our new defaults, you’ll need to first clear your customizations in the email_subject setting and relevant site texts.
What do you think?
Over to you: we’d love to hear what you think of this new feature. What do you like and dislike; what is working well, and what could be improved?