Channels App

To break it down even further.. You can created Channels too. For example, you can create a Channel called 'Testing'. Anytime someone makes a post and uses the hashtag #Testing it will post directly to that Channel. 

People can follow that channel and get notifications when someone uses that hashtag. I did notice that in order to see Channels you created, you are REQUIRED to follow that hashtag to see them in 'My Channels'.

I will agree that once a Channel has been created, you cannot edit that channel. The only thing you could do is Delete that channel. 

That makes sense. What was confusing was when I created a channel it was empty.

An issue exists that when creating a channel it does not take into account legacy Hashtags already existing. This may need to be fixed.

Can I make a suggestion?

I thought it was a cool idea to automatically create channels when a hashtag was used but, we need a way to disable auto-create of Channels when someone uses a Hashtag and here is why:

I just created a post to the timeline at my test site that stated: 'This is a test to see if all of these Channels get created'.

I put a # in front of ALL of those words and 9 Channels got created. The words 'a', 'get', and 'created' did not generate a channel. 

Obviously there are some words that will not generate a channel OR there is a limit somewhere I don't know about. I would strongly suggest that Administrators can have the ability to enable/disable auto-create for channels in case someone goes crazy with hashtags in a post. 

OK, So I was looking at the post regarding RC10 from Andrew and saw there is a setting that limits the amout of hashtags that can be used in a single post. It's set to 9 by default. So I am good there. 

Still would recommend a way to enable/disable the 'auto-creation' of a channel.

There are permissions for view, edit, create and delete channels, but as I tried, to set the permissions have no effect on the creation of channels by non admins.

I also do not understand the meaning of ''unconfirmed channels'' in dashboard, as atm #hashtags are converted into channels out of the box without having  influence on this creation as admin

One further suggestion - Would it be possible to define several #hashtags that together comprise a channel.
So rather than one #hashtag additional hashtags could be added to define a channel.
As an example #sports channel could include additional #hashtags such as #soccer #cricket #rugby #AustralianRules etc. This combined with Chris's suggestion to disable auto creation could be extremely useful.

Thanks Mark

One further thought, re Chris' observation, If auto create is enabled it would be useful for the site admin to be able to define / extend the list of #hashtags that are excluded from auto-creation via #Studio. 

Would it be possible to add Banned Hashtags to the Hashtags Module which will not be parsed, but are ignored as Hashtags.

But also have the ability to add a further list of Hashtags to the Channels Module which are not in the banned list but that are not parsed as a channel. 

I also like the idea of being able to create a channel and adding a list of predefined hashtags to it.  This way if a user uses a predefined hashtag it will take the user to that channel that the hashtag is set to, otherwise if autocreation is enabled, new channel is created.