The development team has been working on an Add-on to provide such a function.
We tested one several months ago, but there were a number of problems with it, so, that phase was scrapped.
The Subscribe function is still on the active list of item TO DOs

One problem in putting this into production was the use of the Context Management System (CMS) which Drupal provides. Our old Spine-Health site was PunBB driven and the subscribe function was a built in option. This is NOT the case with drupal. The add-on has to be picked up and retrofitted into this environment. Th

Ron, has the development team ever considered purchasing a vBulletin license and using vBDrupal to incorporate vB forums into the Drupal CMS?

Call me crazy, but a lot of the answers to questions about "missing" features seem to start with "Drupal wont"..... but vB does. Surely the work involved in the setup would be well balanced by the time saved in trying to reinvent the wheel by developing these kinds of add-ons.

Just a thought.. from someone that fully appreciates the subscribe to feature..

at this point so much has been devoted into the entire site with Drupal, that changes would be difficult to make.
The Forum piece is really the smallest piece of the entire site.
I know when we first migrated from PunBB to Drupal other systems were looked at (Vbulletin being one of them). None of those provided what this site needed.
And what seems like a small item, migrating member names and passwords is a major task. The security scheme used in most PhP developed packages, make it impossible to carry forward passwords to a different platform.
The direction that the site has been heading is to address and attempt to fix and/or add new functions.
We had a long list when the migration started, those have either been incorporated.

joomla seems to support these "add ons" much better. I have not done it myself but know people who went from drupal to joomla rather painlessly with some redirects in the beginning ?

There is much more involved then just the software to drive the forums. There was a lot of research done to determine which CMS Spine-Health should migrate to when we moved off of PunBB. Drupal had the answers then and allowed for growth that was anticipated for many years.
There are so many other forum software packages out there, so have all the bells and whistles. One area where many failed was the size of the data base. In the past year, Spine-Health gained about another 4,000 members and we are still growing. So, it was so important to look down the road to make sure the software was right.
Sure, Drupal has its problems, personally I think its in the general end user area. Most of the other popular PhP forum software come packed with so many features that add ons are really not required.
Drupal does have its add-ons. BUT... the add ons are not just plug and go. There are many things that have to be considered when installing any add-on.
When we first migrated to Drupal, we had an ongoing member wishlist. Those have been resolved and until this topic about subscriptions was made, there were no other request.
I can tell you that the add on for subscriptions is being tweaked. In a pure Drupal environment, it works fine.. I've tested it at my site as well on the Spine-Health beta site. But put it in with the production system and things just do not gel that well. It will come.

Like Beth, I prefer Joomla too, but that's not much of an issue because SH is married to Drupal now.

However, you don't have to scrap an existing Drupal CMS to use vBDrupal. In my opinion, the main benefit is that it creates shared usernames/passwords/sessions between Drupal and vB, so there's not multiple system management required to enjoy the best features of both systems. The second benefit is that it's a fork of Drupal development, rather than a traditional add-on.

But anyway, it was just a suggestion, for what it was worth. It was based partly on the features I miss as a user and also on the issues I've seen posted from the admins that I know are not such troublesome issues with other software, like the apparent difficulty in effectively banning users.

And I had no idea there was a wish list of features for SH. I'm still kinda getting over the shock of learning that the "flag as offensive" button on posts doesn't actually work.. maybe replacing the image with a clear gif would be another suggestion, on that topic...

Ron. Not Drupal bashing. But let's look at some facts about vBulletin vs Drupal.

I'm not sure who did the homework on the user database and how it scales. But vBulletin easily accommodates more users than you could ever hope to have. I'm not being mean. I'm being factual. Your 11,000 user count is nothing.

Corvette Forum
Threads: 2,197,196, Posts: 31,608,106, Members: 229,013
That is as of 1 hour ago.

It is running:
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.7.2
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Search Engine Friendly URLs by vBSEO 3.2.0

Believe me this used to be an open website run by a bunch of Vette Nuts. They sold out to some Canadian marketing company. So did several other car sites. This thing is all about money and advertising now. It still happens to be the best Vette site on the web. It's functionality blows away Drupal so badly. So a site can use vBulletin and be a business. This site is becoming more B2B and a money maker as opposed to a forum. You could do with vBulletin.

Also on CF they actively prune the member DB. If you don't login for a year. They'll dump your account. They consider you baggage. As it should be. I'm sure out of your 11,000 member list you're lucky if half are active, at best. I rarely see more than 50 interactive users on here and that is being generous. You get lots of Guest hits. So that's good for business.

Just some more thoughts. If there is a way to get the power of vBulletin tied into Drupal. So the forum runs on a good package and the site runs on a good package. Then the bean counters and users can have a nice system.

I honestly see little that is done here that is not done on a few Corvette sites I visit. There are also some racing sites where I keep up with stats, register for events, keep up my club memberships, etc... None of them use Drupal. They hold the national database for the 2 major car associations in this country. They handle account renewals and registrations via Paypal, CC, etc.. They also have built-in stores with shopping carts etc...

It seems you're stuck with Drupal whether that is good or bad. At least maybe there is a way to tweak it and require a staff of programmers. I get the impression this company has 1-2 programmers at most.

Thanks for listening,
Graham

is the best way to approach anything new. I wasnt involved in the beginning research of the Drupal migration, but I do know by the time I did get involved and new Spine-Health developers were brought in, Drupal was the choice product to go with.
Graham, you are correct, there are many sites with more member numbers.
But sheer numbers dont always tell the story. There is a lot into the the web stats, users per page, how many visits, etc.
Besides everything I have ever mentioned about Drupal, another major feature was the ability to have multiple sites using one data base. At the time this was reviewed, almost all other forum software could support multiple sites, but each one was a data base that had to be replicated. Drupal could share. Is that still valid?? I dont know for sure.
But, just knowing the time that has already been invested i Drupal, the entire CMS system and how the whole Spine-Health site fits in, changes are going to be hard to come. We all have to remember, the Forum piece is really the smallest piece of this web site, its the freebie that is offereed for the members. But the technical pieces, videos, articles, all need income, and some of that comes from the doctor registratations etc... That is where a company like Spine-Health as well as WebMD and others bring in revenue to offer freebies

Still I have been around all sorts of systems for over 32 years before even getting involved with Spine-Health, so I know always checking things out is the best way to move ahead