If enabled, Category Following allows all users to:
- Follow Categories
- Choose a notification type
📝 NOTE: This feature replaces the legacy Advanced Notifications feature, which was limited to Admins and Moderators.
The importance of Category Following cannot be overstated: these notifications make it much easier for your users to stay updated about the content they find interesting, which in turn increases the overall level of engagement across your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community.
Enable Category Following
1. Access the Dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings > Discussions > Categories.
3. Click the settings icon at the top of the page.
4. Slide the toggle to the right.
5. Click Save.
Follow a Category
When the Category Following feature is enabled, all users will see a bell icon at the top of each Category page.
📝 NOTE: By default, all Categories will be set to Unfollow, giving users the freedom to choose which ones they want to follow.
Following a Category adds it to the Followed Categories section of your Profile > Notifications Preferences page. From here, you can manage the notification option for each Category at any time via the Email and Popup checkboxes.
Notification options
To follow a Category, click the bell icon and select one of the four available notification options:
Follow
- Adds the Category to your Followed Categories on your preferences page, but does not check the Email or Popup boxes (i.e., no notifications are enabled, though you can manually change that later).
Discussions
- Adds the Category to your Followed Categories on your preferences page and checks the Popup box.
- By default, you'll receive popup notifications whenever new discussions are posted to the Category.
Discussions and Comments
- Adds the Category to your Followed Categories on your preferences page and checks the Popup box.
- By default, you'll receive popup notifications whenever new discussions and comments are posted to the Category.
Unfollow
- By default, all Categories are set to Unfollow until you choose to follow them. If you’re already following a Category, you can set it to Unfollow at any time to disable all notifications and remove it from your list of Followed Categories.
Notes
- Regardless of the notification option you choose, all Categories you follow are easily filterable on the
/categories page by setting the View: menu to Following.
- Followed Categories are indicated by a solid bell icon for easy visual reference.
- If you choose to receive Email notifications for a Category, the text in the Category notification dialog will update to read Notify of all new discussions by email / Notify of all new posts by email (as shown below).
Notification Preferences page
When the Category Following feature is enabled, the Followed Categories section is added to your profile’s Notification Preferences page, making it easy to:
- See which Categories you're currently following
- Update their notification options at any time using the Email and Popup checkboxes
Email vs. Popup
When choosing how to receive notifications for a followed Category, you have two options:
- Check the Email box to have emails sent to your profile and personal inboxes. Keep in mind this option sends a separate email for each new discussion and comment; this option can result in numerous emails, so it's generally only recommended for Categories in which you're heavily invested or interested in.
✔️ TIP: In your personal inbox, these emails may end up in your Spam folder, so be sure to check there if you don't see it.
- Check the Popup box to have a popup display directly in the Vanilla community, at the bottom-left of the screen. These occur in near real-time.
Access your Notification Preferences page
There are two ways to access this page:
- From your Profile > Edit Profile page, click Notification Preferences.
- Click the bell icon on a Category page and click the settings icon.
Advanced Notifications (legacy feature)
Categories you were following prior to the launch of Followed Categories (when they were referred to as Advanced Notifications) should remain on your profile, but we do recommend double checking your selections in your Notification Preferences.
Additional resources
Click the link below to access a video expanding on what you learned in this article.
