Discourse email settings

You can configure Discourse to send you email.

  1. Click on your avatar in the menu bar next to the search and hamburger icons.
  2. Click your user name and then “Preferences”.
  3. Select the “Emails” section on the left-hand side menu.

Receiving email

There are various options available:

  • You can opt to receive emails when someone messages you or when someone quotes you, mentions you or replies to one of your posts.
  • You can select to receive an activity summary when you don’t visit the site. This is similar to a mailing list digest.
  • The final option is to enable mailing list mode. Use this option if you don’t wish to visit the site and would like to use Discourse as a mailing list.

Replying by email

When replying to a post by email, please don’t or sign your message or quote the whole of the previous message in your reply. You can use either HTML or markdown to format your text.

Inline quotes are possible using the markdown “>” character commonly used for this purpose. Attribution of the quote is possible using a slightly more verbose syntax:

[quote="username"]
Something said by username
[/quote]

There are also a few short message replies that perform an action rather than create a post:

Message Action
+1 or <3 Like a post
mute Mute a topic
track Track a topic
watch Watch a topic

Tracking and watching a topic are not relevant for mailing list mode.

Creating a new topic by email

New topics can only be created by email when a user reaches trust level 1 (Basic). This is a restriction intended to reduce spam. If this causes you a problem please contact a member of staff.

It is only possible to create new posts in certain categories. The categories and corresponding email addresses are listed below:

Category Address
Help help@gramps.discourse.group
Development development@gramps.discourse.group
Feedback feedback@gramps.discourse.group
1 Like

If we respond via Discourse does it also get transmitted on existing email mailing list?
Or is the discourse totally separate from the email mailing list?

By default, Discourse replies stay on Discourse. So, ‘No’ the general maillist subscriber sees none of the Discourse discussion.

Each Discourse user does have the option to carbon copy postings to their eMailbox. It was a feature the Discourse developers added reluctantly. Their Development & Support site is clear that they specifically do NOT want this tool to become the modern replacement interface of maillists. (But they still relent & implement features that move it in that direction!)

Ok. That’s too bad, our communications will be siloed.

We’re still in the ‘proof of viability’ phases with Discourse. If it proves out, the Gramps project might migrate its subscribers here & deprecate the maillist.

And there’s even the possibility of flowing the archives into Discourse topics. But that is less likely as it looks like it would create a huge resource suck.

Just say no to silage!

Hello jeff,

Ok. That’s too bad, our communications will be siloed.

There’s nothing stopping you sending a message to both lists.

I would strongly advise against a simple Cc, though.

Please update the steps in the 1st section:

  • first step is that you have to be logged into an account on this Gramps Discourse forum
    (This thread is visible when anonymously web browsing)
  • Change “Click your user name …” as no user name appeared when browsing in Firefox, only a generic Person icon.
  • could you break step 2 into 2 steps?

could you add the attached illustration before the steps?
DiscoursePreferences

1 Like

It looks like the menu has changed slightly since I wrote the post.

1 Like

I thought that was probably the case.

If you want to edit the original posting & move the image, I will delete these last 2 postings of mine & the one earlier. It’d probably be best to prune this thread so new visitors don’t feel the need to read an entire thread, just your first posting

![DiscoursePreferences|486x415, 75%](upload://z1vTAB6cNxv87KTVM9sQAqmoF6f.png)