Finding what's new at Marrowforums

[Marrowforums]

A few people have asked if they can get email when there are new forum posts. The answer is yes, at least for specific forums or threads in which you are interested.

Getting email when there are new threads or new posts is one way to learn what's new in the forums. There are also ways to learn what's new without using email.

Below we outline two ways to find out what's new by email, two ways to find out what's new without using email, and a way to have your computer check what's new for you.

You don't need to use all of these methods. Pick the one that suits you best.

If you have questions about these methods, see the FAQ, start a new thread in the Site Comments section, or contact us.

[Marrowforums]

Marrowforums has two email notification features that you can use to find new threads and posts:

1. Digests. You can have daily or weekly digests sent to you by email. You "subscribe" to any number of forums and/or any number of threads that you want to follow. You are then sent daily or weekly email telling you of new activity. Clicking one of the links in the email will take your web browser to the new thread or new post.
   
   
2. Instant email. You can have email sent to you as soon as somebody makes a post in a thread, but only for threads you specifically subscribe to. For performance reasons, there is no option to email you instantly for every post in every thread.

Both of these features use the forum's "email notification" feature. You can read more about subscriptions and email notification in the Forum and Thread Subscriptions page of the FAQ.

You may wonder why you can't get email every time a post is made to any forum. That's because of the nature of forum systems. A busy forum system may have hundreds or thousands of members making hundreds or thousands of posts. If 150 members each made 2 posts a day, and every member was notified of every post, that would generate 1.3 million email messages a month. Whenever the number of members doubles, the number of email messages quadruples. Since some forum sites have thousands of members, sending email notifications by default would clearly be impractical.

Instead, members can pick and choose the discussions they want to follow, by subscribing to one or more specific forums or threads.

If you want to keep track of as much as possible, you can subscribe to every single forum and thereby learn of all new threads from the digest emailed to you. If you find that you are getting too much email that way, you can unsubscribe from some or all forums.

[Marrowforums]

With these methods, you must visit Marrowforums to learn what's new. You are not notified of new threads or posts, but it's easy to find them once you come to the forums.

1. When you visit Marrowforums, click the New Posts link at the top of any forum page. It will show you all threads that have been created or updated since your last visit.
   
   In the resulting display, the most recently updated threads will be shown first. You can click a thread title to go to the start of the thread or click the Go to last post icon to go to the first post that you haven't already seen.
   
   
2. When you visit Marrowforums, click the Today's Posts link at the top of any forum page. It will show you all posts from the last 24 hours.

If there are no new threads or posts to show you, you will get the message Sorry, there are no new threads to view.

[Marrowforums]

With a method called RSS, you can have your computer automatically check what's new at Marrowforums. This method may be the most convenient of all, but may seem complicated because there are so many choices of software.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a technology that lets software on your computer track what's new at a web site. The website must support RSS and you must have an RSS reader, which is software that understands RSS feeds, the data made available by the website.

When you use an RSS reader to subscribe to one or more Marrowforums forums, the RSS reader checks those forums periodically, showing you the titles of new threads. Clicking a title will send your web browser to that thread in the forums. (This use of the word subscribe differs from the method described above for forum subscriptions and thread subscriptions.)

Facts about RSS readers:

• Some are built into web browsers.
• Some are built into email clients.
• Some are plugins for web browsers.
• Some are plugins for email clients.
• Some are standalone applications.
• Some are free.
• Some are commercial products.

RSS readers are built into the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client for Windows and Macintosh. Firefox calls the feature Live Bookmarks.

For Windows, see the Microsoft RSS page for information about RSS readers and recommended software. Commercial RSS readers for Microsoft Outlook include NewsGator and intraVnews.

An RSS reader is built into the Safari web browser for Macintosh.

There are dozens of other RSS readers.

For further information, see How do I use an RSS reader to watch forums? in the FAQ.