Latest release - changes to notifications

[KatyMumsnet]

We are currently releasing a change to our notifications system that is causing some errors on the site. Everything should be working fine within the next hour. Apologies to anyone being affected by the errors.

Here are the details of the changes we’ve made...

Our notifications system controls email and web notifications you receive based on your settings and we’ve just released some changes to make it more flexible so that you have more control over what you’re notified about.

We’ve also introduced two new notifications that are available via email or web:

• OP updates - this will notify you when an OP updates a thread you’re watching or have posted on
• Quotes - this will notify you when another user quotes you

If you are receiving watch thread notifications you’ll now be able to differentiate between updates about threads you’ve started, threads you’ve posted on and the threads you’re just watching.

Web notifications appear in the ‘notifications’ feed accessible via the person icon in the top right corner of the website (see screenshot). We’ve added settings for each type of notification so you’re able to control what you’re notified about.

We’ve made a small change to make thread lists easier to manage too. You can now 'unwatch' threads from your ‘I’m on’ or ‘I started’ lists, so they remain on the list but you’ll no longer be updated about them (see screenshot). You'll find it in the three dot menu next to the thread titles.

If you want to change your notification settings you can find them here: https://www.mumsnet.com/settings/notifications

The changes currently only apply to the website, not the apps.

@KatyMumsnet I thought the site had been hacked or something, my notifications are wild and for threads I've never even looked at!

Same here. I've over 50 notifications - mainly for threads I've never seen before!

Really sorry about the issues you're seeing we had some unexpected complications when updating this system.

The wrong thread IDs were being assigned to notifications which is why you're seeing some you've never seen before - but this should stop happening soon.

Bear with us!

I too received loads if notifications for threads I’m not on or watching.

I appreciate its an error from the upgrade but please note that one of threads I was wrongly notified about was quite triggering for me.

I assume it’s the same for other posters. If for example you’re infertile but want children, then it could be upsetting to get notifications about ‘a thread you’re on’ when those threads are pregnancy & TTC. Which are two threads I was notified about.

This isn’t something your explanation and apology has specifically covered, and while I know there’s little you can do about it, it’s important for MNHQ to understand that the notifications may be a little more than just an irritation.

Only 1 of the threads is one I've been on... the rest I don't recognise at all. I've logged out and back in again.

Yup, we've all got more than 50 notifications for threads we haven't even seen, yet alone commented on.

I'm really sorry to hear this caused upset for you @TigersAndToucs. This isn't something we anticipated as the error did not occur during testing. The last thing we want is to upset people and we're working as fast as we can to fix the error.

@larkstar this is a known issue that we are trying to fix

And I’ve lost the ones I was following.

Having written software for 20+ years and built and maintained my own websites (Joomla, etc) it seems pretty clear your developers are not working in a professional way - that could be down to poor management and/or a poorly developed test and release process.

Hi all,

We've released a fix that should stop you seeing the wrong threads - we're running it now and it should complete in a couple of hours. You may see things return to normal in the meantime.

Thanks for your patience on this!

@KatyMumsnet are you sure you haven't been hacked?

There was this incident today and the thread I started the other day about being autodirected to a different web page by clicking on the navigation buttons. Another poster had the same thing happen to them.

I'm finding it a bit disconcerting tbh.

@larkstar I understand how frustrating it is when things go wrong, but I can assure you that that’s not the case.

Our developers write automated tests for every new feature that is released to the site. Our current test suite has over 2,000 individual tests with more than 20,000 assertions and we have a stringent code review and testing process that goes through multiple teams before changes are released.

In this particular instance, there was a problem with a database migration script that locked some tables. This prevented the site being able to write to those tables which in turn caused the site to be unavailable to logged in users. This script had been run multiple times before today without any problems. Once that migration script had finished running, the site became available again.

We then had to migrate everyone’s old notifications to a new database structure. Again, this migration had been run multiple times in testing but when we ran it today an error occurred that caused some watch notifications to point to the wrong threads. This has now been fixed.

As I’m sure you can appreciate with your software development experience sometimes releases don’t go smoothly. For context, in an average week we release upwards of 20 changes to the site with multiple releases per day - most of which go smoothly and completely unnoticed which is exactly how it should be. Unfortunately, the release today didn’t.

I know it’s extremely frustrating when things like this happen and it’s never something that we want. We take these incidents extremely seriously and have already analysed what went wrong and implemented more checks in our code review process to prevent these issues moving forward.

@HatThatWearsYou We haven’t been hacked, and the two incidents are unrelated. The redirect error reported the other day was due to a bad advert on the site from a third party. Once we had found which advert it was it was prevented from showing on site.

Once again, I’m really sorry that this happened today. If you do still have any problems, please let us know.

@MattTech Thank you for letting me know what happened with the redirect. Is there a reason we weren't updated on the thread about that issue do you know?

Are you almost finished with all the changes?

Hi, I’ve still got the same problem. I have logged out and back in again, but this hasn’t helped.

The notifications are still not working well this morning. I am getting multiple notifications for the same thread. If I haven't got round to visiting the thread since the last notification you should not send me another - it is pestering. The notifications used to work perfectly well before the site was re-platformed a few months ago, but have been eratic since then, and have got worse since your change yesterday.

@MattTech still not getting notifications here

@HatThatWearsYou No problem at all. I'm not sure why the other thread wasn't replied to. I'll follow this up internally with the team to find out.

@WahineToa Are you getting no notifications at all, or is it specific types of notifications you're not receiving? If you could let me know I can take a look.

Thanks @MattTech tbh it’s going back and forth. I had none. I had to go find my threads instead. Then it seemed to come right, but just now it’s telling me I have like 17 notifications but I don’t and I’m only on a couple of threads. Then I go and there’s notifications listed but not highlighted for threads I’m not on. I’ll log in and out again ti see if it fixes it.

@WahineToa Thanks for the information. Could you check your settings (www.mumsnet.com/settings/notifications) to make sure that you've got the notifications you're expecting to receive turned on please?

Thanks

Yes I did that when this all happened yesterday. I’m just going to log out again

Also I see others on the other thread still have similar issues, I’ve reminded them to come here to tell you Matt. I’ve logged out and back in again so let’s see if that shakes things up and corrects it 😂

I’m still having this issue. The number of notifications is showing as 39 even when I click through it shows 3 only. It’s showing notifications for an old thread “due in 2007” and even when I click on it it won’t go away, stays as unread.

@MattTech also, is this a new feature… so it says I have 4 notifications. The old system that would mean 4 separate threads with however many extra comments. Now it’s 4 notifications there, but I go to it and its 1 thread with 4 new comments. That’s really annoying!

@WahineToa That is indeed a new feature. Thanks for letting us know your thoughts on it. We've just discussed it internally and we're going to change that back to how it was before because we agree that it's not really the right number to be showing. We should be able to roll that fix out within a couple of hours.

Cheers @MattTech and sorry to be a bother! I am married to a software developer! I know how much of a stress it is when a release go wrong even just a tiny bit! But he also tells me to tell you exactly what is happening!!