Follow Specific User Content

This application will give members the ability to follow specific user content from other members. This will make the user to receive only notifications of content of interest.

File Information

Submitter Adriano

Submitted 12/13/2019

Category Paid Applications/Plugins

View File

What's New in Version 1.0.3:

• Script optimization to fix issue reported

What's New in Version 1.0.4:

• Fix error reported.

What's New in Version 1.1.0:

• Script optimization to speed queries.

What's New in Version 1.2.0 :

• Plugin converted to an application due to an IPS request.

Instructions:

Simply install the application and it will take care of everything:

• Will copy the plugin data to a proper application table
• Will copy the settings
• Will uninstall the plugin

What's New in Version 1.2.1

• Adds the Update Check URL to let you know when a new version is available.

Hi @Adriano!

I've purchased "Follow Specific User Content" version 1.2.1 back in January 2024 (as far as I remember). It's up and running on my (currently) 4.7.18 IC forum.

I noticed however one issue with it. It overwrites settings for users. It works perfeclty for one tracked user, but when I set custom notification rules for second user, it defaults the settings of user one to "notify about everything".

I know it might be hard to understand my explanation, so I've recorded video documenting the nature of the issue (forum is in Polish but I'm explaining everything). Please watch the video and let me know whether you can fix this extension.

If that requires additional payment, then please let me know how much shall I pay.

Thanks in advance!

Michal Szafranski
Cheers from Poland!

I'll install it over the weekend and will test it.

On 10/26/2024 at 4:02 PM, Michal Szafranski said:

Hi @Adriano!

I've purchased "Follow Specific User Content" version 1.2.1 back in January 2024 (as far as I remember). It's up and running on my (currently) 4.7.18 IC forum.

I noticed however one issue with it. It overwrites settings for users. It works perfeclty for one tracked user, but when I set custom notification rules for second user, it defaults the settings of user one to "notify about everything".

I know it might be hard to understand my explanation, so I've recorded video documenting the nature of the issue (forum is in Polish but I'm explaining everything). Please watch the video and let me know whether you can fix this extension.

If that requires additional payment, then please let me know how much shall I pay.

Thanks in advance!

Michal Szafranski
Cheers from Poland!

On it now.

What's New in Version 1.2.2

• Fix: https://www.sosinvision.com.br/index.php?/forums/topic/1206-follow-specific-user-content/&do=findComment&comment=17233

Thank you @Adriano! I'm downloading 1.2.2 and will test it...

@Adriano Everything seems to be working OK. Thank you very much for update!

Hi @Adriano,

Unfortunately I've found another issue. Please, read description below:

1) I've set up notifications for specific user like this:

As I understand those are:

• Status updates - I shall be notified about new status updates by this person.
• Comments in existing threads/topics/statuses - I decided not to get those.
• New topics on forum - I want to get those.
• Events - I don't want to get those.

So basically I shall be notified only in case of new statuses or new topics by this person, right?

2) The problem is that I'm getting notification about comments made by this person in every thread he is commenting. Here is the proof:

When I enter profile of this person I can see those are all recent comments he made:

I'm also getting email notification about his comments and... as you can see in the notification it is just plain comment (not new topic, not new status, even no @ me).

Just to add: I'm NOT observing any of those topics. I get notification about this specific user comments although I set up notifications in such way that I shall not get them.

Could you please take a look at this issue and fix this?

BTW: I confirm I have newest version of the plugin - 1.2.2.

Thanks!

Edited October 31, 20241 yr by Michal Szafranski

Mate, TOO LONG and I don't understand your language so your images are useless.

Please be clear and straight forward.

@Adriano I'm sorry. Short version then:

With version 1.2.2 although I'm setting up notifications ONLY for Status messages and Topics published by specific users, I always get notifications about their Comments in existing topics. This seems to be the bug, as checkbox for Comments is set off.

Could you please take a look and fix the issue?  

I'll take a look in a few days. I have other resources to support first.

Thank you.

On 10/31/2024 at 10:59 AM, Michal Szafranski said:

@Adriano I'm sorry. Short version then:

With version 1.2.2 although I'm setting up notifications ONLY for Status messages and Topics published by specific users, I always get notifications about their Comments in existing topics. This seems to be the bug, as checkbox for Comments is set off.

Could you please take a look and fix the issue?  

Nothing wrong there. Follow a member is different than following a forum. When you follow a member, you will always get notified, only to use the Forums app example:

• when this user creates a new topic
• when this user replies to any topic

That’s how the “follow member” works. My app only restricts the app (Forums, Downloads, Core status updates, Gallery, etc.) but you will always get everything from these apps.

Disable my app and test yourself. 

On 11/1/2024 at 5:30 PM, Adriano said:

That’s how the “follow member” works. My app only restricts the app (Forums, Downloads, Core status updates, Gallery, etc.) but you will always get everything from these apps.

Thank you @Adriano for explanation. Everything clear then.

I approached different problem with 1.2.2. When your app is enabled, users are NOT getting notifications about followed topics. They are notified about user updates according to settings in FSUC app, but not about the topics they followed. It seems that FSUC somehow conflicts with default notification system.

I double-checked that and after disabling of FSUC 1.2.2 app both email and on-forum notifications are working OK.

Could you please check that? I think that before 1.2.2 it worked OK.

Hi @Adriano

Could you please check my previous post and comment on that?

Thanks!

No problem here. I keep getting notifications of topics I follow:

Thank you for testing @Adriano

I’ll try to “catch” the scenario in which those notifications stop working. Maybe it happens only when users customize the settings for FSUC ie. they limit monitoring of specific users content to only status updates and then they don’t get regular followed forums updates. But let me double-check that and I’ll get back to you.

Thanks for your time!

On 11/1/2024 at 6:30 PM, Adriano said:

Nothing wrong there. Follow a member is different than following a forum. When you follow a member, you will always get notified, only to use the Forums app example:

• when this user creates a new topic

• when this user replies to any topic

That’s how the “follow member” works. My app only restricts the app (Forums, Downloads, Core status updates, Gallery, etc.) but you will always get everything from these apps.

Disable my app and test yourself. 

When this app starts to support filtering users' replies to any topic (v4). I will buy it for sure.

I understand it is technically not possible. 😏

Thank Adriano!

Edited September 19, 2025Sep 19 by Jo2024

As already told, the app extends notifications just to filter specific contents. Nothing more. Nothing will chage.

Don’t purchase it as I’m not adding new features to IPS4 apps and this one is dead; it can’t be updated to IPS5.

4 minutes ago, Adriano said:

as already told, the app extends notifications just to filter specific contents. Nothing more. Nothing will chage.

Don’t purchase it as I’m not adding new features to IPS4 apps and this one is dead; it can’t be updated to IPS5.

Understood. Thank you, Aadriano.

Hi Adriano,
I believe I sponsored the creation of this modification and was the first customer.

I've hit a serious scaling issue with the Follow Specific User Content modification.

Whenever a user with a large follower base posts or has a file approved (e.g. 60K+ followers), the my entire site slows to a crawl. Cloudflare shows 520 errors and users see major lag until the notification jobs finally clear.

What’s happening:

• The app inserts itself into the notification send path. Instead of letting IPS notify followers directly, it loops through each follower and cross-checks content type preferences one by one.

• At small scale this was fine. But once you hit tens of thousands of followers, the plugin’s per-recipient checks multiply the workload massively and overwhelm the server.

• To make it worse, the followContentNotifications table never cleans itself. When accounts are deleted or duplicates build up, I’ve had to manually fix it every few months. That unnecessary bloat makes the problem even heavier.

What’s needed for this to work at scale:

1. Optimize the filtering logic

   • The current design runs too many repetitive queries/loops. It needs indexing, bulk operations, or more efficient queries so 60K+ followers can be processed without blocking the site. Maybe batching, or other solutions.

2. Table hygiene

   • Clean up rows on account delete.

   • Prevent duplicates.

   • Maybe add a maintenance task to keep the table lean.

This app is valuable — users love the ability to filter what types of content they’re notified about — but right now it simply doesn’t scale. At our size, it can bring the entire site down.

We need an update that makes the plugin efficient enough to handle large follower counts without crashing everything.

Can you please help?