Important Note: These instructions are not for PBworks Business Edition. If you see a black bar along the top of your own workspace when you're logged in, the notification settings are accessed in a different area. Click here to find out how to access your notification settings in Business Edition.
Email Notifications
Email notifications can keep you updated when pages of your workspaces change, get added, get commented on, or when new files get uploaded. Email notifications are only sent out when other users make changes to your workspaces. You will never receive an email notification for a change on a workspace that you make yourself.
Accessing your Email Notification Preferences
To access your email notification preferences, visit this page when logged in to my.pbworks.com with your email address and password.
https://my.pbworks.com
You'll be presented with a list of the workspaces you're a part of. Next to each workspace listed, you'll see a checkbox which allows you to enable or disable notifications for any workspace you are a part of. By unchecking the checkbox next to the workspace, you will disable notifications for that particular workspace.
Changing email notification frequency
To change the frequency of notifications being sent to you, you must first log in to my.pbworks.com. Then, at the bottom of the page, you'll see the following drop-down list which allows you to set the frequency of your notifications. Click the "Submit" button under the dropdown box to set your preference.
Selective notifications
On basic workspaces, notifications are sent in accordance with the user's notification preferences. Users can set notifications from basic workspaces to be sent never, right away, or from a number of time interval selections. These notifications are sent for all pages and file uploads, and users have no way to control which page edits are sent to them.
In premium workspaces, greater control is given to users about how notifications are sent. Users of premium workspaces have a folder in which they can access Starred Pages. They can then set their notification preferences to only send them updates for Starred pages.
Here's how:
- To star a page, simply click the star to the left of the page title (see below):
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After clicking the star |
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Now, the page will show up in your list of starred pages. To see this list, click your Starred Pages in the Navigator.
- Click on your name as it appears in the gray bar at the top of the page.
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On the following page, you'll see the controls for the notification settings of the starred pages.
Here, you can turn off notifications on the workspace completely, by selecting "Don't send notifications." You can also choose to send notifications for all changes, or just the starred pages. Finally, even if you're only watching the starred pages, you can still be notified once when new pages or files are created on the workspace.
Troubleshooting Notifications
First, notifications are only sent for changes that other users have made to the workspace page. No notifications are sent for changes you've made yourself. By accessing the recent activity of the workspace, you can see if there are any changes that should have been sent to you that have not gone through. To see a complete list of the recent changes on your workspace, visit the "changes.php" page of the workspace you're using.
Secondly, changes to your notification settings can take time to adjust. For example, if your notifications were previously set to "Once an hour" and you change the setting to "Right away" that change will take an hour to adjust.
Finally, email services, if unaware that you are using PBworks, may inadvertently block our emails as spam. Before you contact Support regarding your notification problems, please check with your email service to see if the emails are being blocked or delayed. We can only assure that emails are being sent out, but we cannot guarantee that your email service will deliver them to you.
You can direct your network administrator to this link, which will provide some helpful information about the service that they can use to make sure our emails are delivered to you:
Guide for Network Administrators
When contacting Support regarding notification problems, please provide the answers to the following questions:
- When did this problem first start happening?
- Which workspaces are affected by this problem?
- What users are affected by this problem?
- Have you contacted your email service regarding this issue?
- Have you ever successfully received a notification email from PBworks?
Administrative Notification Settings
If you have access to the settings of any workspace, you can completely turn off notifications for the entire workspace. This means that no matter what setting the user of the workspace has, no email notifications of changes will be sent out.
First log in to the workspace and access the workspace Settings. If you don't see the "Settings" tab pictured below, then you do not have administrative access to the workspace.
When you access the settings, click on Notifications & RSS on the left hand side. Here, you can check and uncheck the options which allow people to receive email notifications or the ability to subscribe to changes through the workspace's RSS feed. Remember to click save when changing any of these settings.
RSS Feeds
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Security note: RSS Feeds are protected content, just like any other page or file on your workspace. Because of this, whatever software is accessing the RSS feed must be able to log in to the PBworks service. Online feed readers, like Google Reader and FeedShow, cannot log in to the PBworks service, so they can only be used if your workspace allows the public to view your pages.
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RSS feeds allow you to keep up-to-date with changes on any workspace, without the need to use your email inbox. Due to security concerns, you must use a web browser, which can log in to your network, to use RSS feeds. RSS feeds cannot be used with any online feed reader, like Google Reader.
Internet Explorer
When an RSS feed is available, the RSS button in IE8 becomes active. Click on this button to see the feeds.
You can select to receive changes on the entire workspace, or just one page.
In the page you're taken to, click the link shown to subscribe to the RSS feed.
Finally, check the box to add the feed to the Favorites bar and click Subscribe to subscribe to the feed. The content of the feed will be available to you simply by clicking the
If you don't want the feed to appear in the Favorites bar, then leave the option unchecked. In that case, you would need to press Ctrl+Shift+J on your keyboard (while in Internet Explorer) to access your feeds (shown below):
Safari
When a feed is available in Safari, the RSS badge will appear in the address bar.
Click on this badge, and select to show the feed for the Recent changes of the current page you're viewing, or of the entire workspace.
Finally, to subscribe to the feed, click the action link in the lower right corner of the RSS feed display to add a bookmark. In Safari, feed subscriptions are treated the same as bookmarks, and are managed in the same way.
Firefox
When a feed is available in Firefox, the RSS symbol will appear in the address bar.
Click on this badge, and select to show the feed for the Recent changes of the current page you're viewing, or of the entire workspace.
Choose to subscribe to the feed using "Live Bookmarks". This is the built-in feed subscription manager for Firefox, and because of the security of networks and workspaces, it's the only way you can use to subscribe to a PBworks feed.
When logged in, the live bookmark will display an up-to-date list of the changes recently made on a workspace or page, depending on the feed you are subscribed to.
Locating the RSS feed URL
The URL for the RSS feed for your workspace is simply the URL of the workspace, with "rss.xml" attached to the end. In the example URL below, you would need to replace the red "workspace" text to your own.
http://workspace.pbworks.com/rss.xml
