Way to automatically subscribe users to forums?

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

We would like to be able to have users that create accounts automatically be subscribed to specific forums so that they receive email notifications when new topics are posted. Is there currently a way to do this? Since it requires several extra steps for the users to "Watch a Forum", it would be nice if as an Admin I could somehow subscribe them to the forums or this could automatically be done.
[originally posted on jforum.net by clc1023]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

There is no built in way to do this. Mainly because the requirements vary so much from site to site. Plus there are potential legal (and moral?) requirements to allow for user to be able to opt-in / opt-out from mass e-mails.

That said, it's not that hard to do what you want. I'd look at modifying a UserAction class method to make a ForumDAO subscribe user call(s).

If you require people who register to validate via e-mail/click the link process, the best place for this would be to modify the UserAction.registrationComplete method to include the auto forum subscription.

Note that this will not subscribe any admin created users or SSO users.


[originally posted on jforum.net by monroe]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

We ended up setting up a trigger that would automatically add users to the jforum_forums_watch table and associate them with the desired forums. We haven't been able to test out whether this will generate the notification emails since no one has posted anything yet, but hopefully this will work.
[originally posted on jforum.net by clc1023]