Question about announcements?

[anidea]

Hi all,

If I create a post and click the button for "announce topic" it seems to email all the members.

According to the (sparse) documentation I've read here about announcements, there should be the option to send an email or a PM.

How do I make it send a PM instead of an email? 

And are there any other options, like having Announcements appear at the top of the forum as a link or a preview or something?

Thanks! 

[xenovanis]

For sending newsletters there's an option to send PM's rather than use the email function. It's in Admin -> News and Newsletters -> Newsletters. I'm not familiar with such an option for topic announcements though. Where did you read this?

[anidea]

For sending newsletters there's an option to send PM's rather than use the email function. It's in Admin -> News and Newsletters -> Newsletters. I'm not familiar with such an option for topic announcements though. Where did you read this?

That's the problem, there is no such setting there.  I want to be able to send an announcement of some sort to everyone via PM or some such, so that they can't escape it.  But I don't want to email them, which is what happens every time I "Announce a Topic".  I thought "Announce a Topic" would mean to let people know, but not via email... :-/

[kat]

Is this "Announce Topic" a mod?

It's not standard, I believe...

[xenovanis]

That's not possible by default, I'm sorry. Topic announcements are based on the same system as notifications, like boardnotifications or notifications for personal messages. The difference is it will allow you to mass mail your members about a topic, rather than depending on their notificationsettings.

You could try requesting this in the Mod Requests board.

[kat]

There are a few, there, already.

If you search for "Announce", you'll see some. 

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?action=search;basic_search=announcement

[xenovanis]

I took a quick look at those K@, but for as far as I see none of those have a setting to send out topic announcements by personal messages instead of using email. 

[kat]

No... Confusing, innit? 

[anidea]

Is this "Announce Topic" a mod?

It's not standard, I believe...

It is standard.  It's a checkbox under "Additional Options."  It's available to anybody that has permissions set that way under permissions. (but since I'm admin in my own forum, it's obviously available to me)

[anidea]

There are a few, there, already.

If you search for "Announce", you'll see some. 

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?action=search;basic_search=announcement

Yeah, my next attempt is "Yet Another Global Announcements Mod"...but I'm not 100% clear that it will do what I want.

There's another mod that I also don't quite understand, I saw someone else recommend it, the one by JayBachatero, but again, I'm unsure at this point.

Mostly I thought that if there were a way to do it without a mod, I'd explore that first, but it sounds like the answer is no

[kat]

Use the newsletter to announce a link to the post?