Not Receiving Forum Notifications

[Zephyros]

I have not received any notifications for new posts or replies on the forum since June 19th. I emailed another member, Bruce, who is also experiencing the same issue. Neither of us are having Spam box issues so it has to be a setting or bug in the forum software that needs attention.

I the last few days I did receive notifications from the Classifieds and the Lounge but none from the Model Specific Discussions.

Is anyone else seeing this issue?

Are there any site admins who can help out?

Best Regards, Tom
aka: Zephyros

[bruce]

Just to follow up, I hadn't been receiving any notifications over the past month or so, until this past week. Looking back over the week, I received 3 for Boat and Hardware Mods, 1 for the Lounge, 5 for How to DIY, and last Sunday, 2 for the Sun Cat list. A good range, but plenty of misses on other lists I'm signed up for, and some on these same lists.

I've tried turning off notifications and turning them back on, but it didn't seem to help.

With all the lists, it is a handy feature!

[Tim Gardner]

I have checked the notify option on both the board level and individual topic levels and both appear to be working correctly.  Recheck your spam  and or block settings on your email app.  You may be causing this inadvertently.

TG

[bruce]

Thanks Tim,

Checked that before and I will again. I don't use spam filters, and have no addresses blocked. Not sure why that would be intermittent, are all outgoing notifications from the same email address?

When I check my Account Related Settings under Profile, and click on Notifications and Email, the Current Topic Notifications and Current Board Notifications appear to be correct. For example, your post this morning on this topic shows I should receive a notification, but none arrived.

I agree it seems like a personal problem, and I wrote it off as such, until Tom approached me off list to see if I was having problems. For both of us, the issue started about a month ago. My last post I reported some improvement, but since then I've received few if any notifications.

I note no one else has chimed in saying they're having problems too. That's fortunate, and suggests we're the problem. Be kind. I'll keep checking what I can.

[brackish]

I note no one else has chimed in saying they're having problems too. That's fortunate, and suggests we're the problem. Be kind. I'll keep checking what I can.

I wonder how many regular users even have them turned on or know they exist.  For instance I only get notifications on PM's and maybe that happens automatically.  I did not know there was a setting that caused notifications for everything.  I generally go to the forum for a quick glance of what is new every day anyway, and don't think I would want more emails coming through.

[Zephyros]

Hello Tim,

Thank you for the reply and for checking the forum settings. Knowing we would be asked about Spam filters, that was the first thing both of us checked, as I first posted.

So that means it is a bug in the "Simple Machines" forum software. I dug into the forum software and here is the problem.

The forum is currently running the the following software:
SMF 2.0.15, Released on: November 19, 2017
https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=557176.0

There are two known forum software bugs, as listed on the "Simple Machines" website, these have been addressed by the following two updates:

SMF 2.1 RC1: released on February 04, 2019
BUG LIST ITEM #13)  Bug fixes for alerts and email notifications.
https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=564881.0

SMF 2.1 RC2: Released on March 30, 2019
BUG LIST ITEM #1)  A fix for a bug that prevented background tasks, including sending notifications and alerts, from completing.
https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=566669.0

Like Bruce, I did not receive a notification of your reply, so there is another current and realtime example of the Simple Machines forum software not functioning correctly.

Can you please request that the forum site admin or webmaster update the forum software to the latest SMF 2.1 RC2 release, hopefully this will solve the issue.

Best Regards, Tom

[bruce]

I agree it's a first world problem. I do scan the boards to see what's new from the CPYOA home page when I can. Notifications are most useful for me when there are several topics on the same board that are active. I might not see that a topic I'm following has a new post before another topic on that board gets a post.

I haven't been using the Show unread posts since your last visit or Show new replies to your post. I'll try those out.

Still, I do like the email notifications feature. I'm checking my email all the time, and, if it's a topic I'm following, the notification can sit in my inbox as a reminder.

Another feature I especially like is the warning that someone else has posted while I was drafting this, as Tom has minutes ago. In reading his post, I can see he has a much better handle on this than I do!

[CaptK]

If I am understanding correctly, this issue has just started happening lately, since June sometime.

There has been no change made to the base code on which the site runs for some time (probably late '17/early '18). That to me would indicate it is *not* the software itself which has caused the change - because it has not changed.

Ergo - something else has....

A fix is not as simple as just upgrading the Forum software, and here's why:

Note that in the software version name, there are versions "RC1" and "RC2". The RC designation stands for "Release Candidate".
That means that it is still Beta software (or: in testing, bug fixing phase, which is to me not at all ideal for "production" live sites), despite being close enough to be a candidate for release. Yes, SMF says that their devs there believe it stable enough for general use, but this is our boat, and *they* don't have to put up with *you*, in the case that it doesn't - I do.

Perspective: I've been herding websites and computers long enough to find out the hard way to NEVER be an "early adopter", because that usually means you pay a premium - whether in price, or heart/headache.
On a system of my own that I am playing with, geeking out for fun to see some new obscure feature of Linux or whatever, it's not *that* big of an issue when I just happen to be the one guy to find that really obscure bug that makes my computer dead in the water. (It does still suck, however.)

OTOH, in a live, production environment - having a few hundred angry Forum members disappointed and possibly unable to use the site because I jumped the gun just for the sake of having the 'latest, greatest' and it came back to bite me on the stern - no thanks, been there, done that, and nobody enjoyed it.

I've learned that it is much, much better to let others deal with the myriad issues an upgrade presents before *I* (or you!) have to deal with them - so that there has been time for issues to have been found and fixed.
My solution: I tend to wait a few weeks, a month or two after the official Release of a Version, to drop it onto my servers.
Even then there are a couple days of almost cringing, waiting to see if anything bad is gonna happen...

So - that leads us to this - correlation is not causation - our Forum software has been working perfectly and unchanged for well over a year. I think it unlikely to be the cause of the issue, because of that.
This issue, OTOH, is 1) recent, and 2) apparently somewhat variable to the user, from what I am reading, making me think it likely to be caused by something other than the Forum software itself.

There are many variables which could contribute to the problem being described, let's take a look at some of those. Here's a short list, feel free to run with it if you can think of anything to add.

What browsers are you guys using, & version number of said?
What OS?
What device (& device OS version if mobile) to access the Forum and/or email?
Do you access said on only one device, or do you use multiple devices?
If multiples, have you checked for the issue across all of them?
Have you tried using another device you have, if otherwise you only use the one where you are seeing the issue?
Who is your internet service and/or email provider?
How do you access email - through a web-based interface (ie; in your browser), via an email client (Outlook, Mail, Thunderbird, etc...), or in a mobile app?
What kind of security software are you using?

[bruce]

Thanks, Captain, for your review of the issue and your insight as administrator. I can certainly relate to avoiding early adoption just for the sake of it.

At this point I'm not receiving any notifications, but the Current Topic Notifications in my Profile seems to be current and correct. I typically use Safari 11.1.2 on my late 2015 iMac running 10.11.6. I do use Bitdefender antivirus. My ISP is Cox, and currently I'm using their webmail. I have no blocked sites, and am eyeballing everything they call spam. ~2% error rate there, but never, from what I can find, from compacsrule@gmail.com, that sends the CPYOA notifications. I will try varying the browser, and report anything useful.

[CaptK]

Thx Bruce!

I wasn't aware that the sending address was the Gmail address. Could be some throttling on their part, if teh software is sending lots of emails. Will look into that later on.

[Zephyros]

Hello CaptK,

Thank you for the reply, as Bruce noted this is an email problem, not a browser or platform problem.

In light of "There has been no change made to the base code on which the site runs for some time (probably late '17/early '18)"

Is it possible the server software has had any of it's underlying support code or files updated, security patches etc.? Second, since this is a known SMF problem, is it possible the issues did not appear until the host website reached x number of posts, x number of users, x number of subscribed notifications, etc. This additional load and processing delay may have triggered the SMF bug. For example, I've received three disparate random notifications in the last month, of the dozens I'm subscribed to. This seems to agree with the symptoms of RC2 BUG LIST ITEM #1)  A fix for a bug that prevented background tasks, including sending notifications and alerts, from completing..

Just my thoughts as a retired systems engineer.