Notifications

Notifications are the in-app activity feed that tells a member when someone interacts with them or with content they care about: new followers, connection requests, reactions, comments, mentions, space activity, and more. They appear behind the bell icon in the header and on the full Notifications page, with a live unread count.

Why use it

A community only grows when people come back, and people come back when something is waiting for them. A follow, a comment, a mention, an approved space request - each of these is a reason to return, but only if the member finds out about it. Notifications close that loop. The moment someone acts, the recipient sees a count on the bell and can jump straight to what happened.

For the member, notifications are the pulse of their presence in the community: who noticed their post, who wants to connect, what is happening in their spaces. For the owner, timely notifications are the single biggest driver of re-engagement - they turn a one-time visitor into a returning member without any extra effort on the owner's part. The system is on by default for every sensible event, so a member is kept in the loop from day one, and they stay in control of what reaches them (see Notification Preferences).

How it works (for members)

What gets a member notified

BuddyNext creates a notification when another member does something that involves you. The current events are:

A member never gets notified about their own actions, and notifications are suppressed between members who have blocked each other. Muting or restricting a member silences the notifications you would have received from them, one direction only.

Note: Some events depend on the feature being active. Direct-message notifications only appear when messaging is enabled on the site, and discussion-reply, media, badge, and level-up notifications require the matching companion plugin.

Viewing notifications

The bell icon sits in the site header. When you have unread notifications, a small badge shows the count (it caps at "99+"). Click the bell to open the full Notifications page, which lists everything addressed to you, newest first, grouped into Today, Yesterday, and Older. Each row shows who acted, what they did, and a relative time, and links to the post, profile, or space it refers to.

Marking as read and mark-all-read

• Clicking a notification row marks that single notification as read and takes you to the related content.
• The page has a mark-all-read action that clears every unread notification at once.

The unread count and the bell badge update immediately, without a page reload.

Deleting a notification

Each row has a dismiss action that removes that notification permanently. Dismissing is different from marking read: a read notification stays in your list, a dismissed one is gone.

Filtering

The Notifications page has filter tabs so you can narrow the list (for example, unread only). Switching tabs updates the list in place, without reloading the page.

Grouped notifications

When the same kind of event happens repeatedly on the same object, BuddyNext merges them into one row instead of flooding your list. If ten people react to the same post, you see a single "reactions on your post" notification with a count, not ten separate entries. Merging applies to unread notifications within a 24-hour window; after that, or once you have read the row, a new event starts a fresh entry. This keeps a busy post from burying everything else.

Near-real-time updates

You do not need to refresh the page to see new activity. The bell badge checks for new notifications in the background and keeps itself current - roughly every 30 seconds while you are idle, and every 5 seconds for the first minute after you take an action, so a reply or new arrival shows up almost at once. An optional sound can play when a new notification arrives (off by default; see Notification Preferences).

Setting it up (for owners)

Notifications are on out of the box - there is nothing a member must enable to start receiving them. As the owner, what you control is the default state for the most common notification types, so new members start with sensible settings they can later adjust. Those defaults live under BuddyNext > Notifications and are covered in Notification Preferences.

The bell ships as part of the user menu, which you place in your header with the [buddynext_user_menu] shortcut (BuddyNext-aware themes already include it). It shows the bell icon with the live unread badge for the logged-in member and links to the full Notifications page. Logged-out visitors see nothing. The standalone Notification Bell block is no longer offered in the block inserter.

Good to know

• An empty Notifications page is normal for a brand-new member. The list fills as other members interact with them.
• Marking read and dismissing are independent: read keeps the row, dismiss removes it.
• The bell badge counts unread notifications only; reading or dismissing them brings the count down.
• Grouped rows count as one notification toward the unread badge, no matter how many events they represent.
• Notifications between blocked members are never created, so neither side can use them to reach the other.
• Declining a connection request is silent. A member is told when their request is accepted, and told nothing when it is not. There is no "your request was declined" notification, by design: turning someone down should not cost them a notification, and it should not put the person who declined on the spot. The request simply goes away.

Free vs Pro

In-app notifications, the bell, the full Notifications page, grouping, filtering, and automatic background refresh are all part of the free plugin. The free build keeps the bell current by checking for new activity on a short interval, which is enough to feel live for most communities. Pro adds instant web push so a member is alerted even when the tab is not open - see Push Notifications.

Related

• Notification Preferences - choosing which events notify you and how
• Push Notifications - the Pro web-push channel beyond the bell
• Near-Real-Time Updates - how the bell count keeps itself current