# Following and Subscriptions

GravityOps Forum includes a subscription system for tracking forum activity. This feature is available on Premium.

## 1. What Can Be Followed

The subscription system supports:

- **Forums**: Follow a forum to receive notifications for activity in that forum.
- **Topics**: Follow a single topic to receive notifications for replies in that topic.

## 2. Front-End Follow Controls

When Premium is active and a user is logged in:

- A **Follow Forum / Unfollow Forum** button is shown on forum pages.
- A **Follow Topic / Unfollow Topic** button is shown on topic pages.

Topic-level follow behavior:

- If the user already follows the parent forum, the topic-level follow control is replaced with a disabled **Following Forum** state.

## 3. My Subscriptions in Profile

The profile page includes a **My Subscriptions** section on Premium plans.

- It lists current forum, topic, and user subscriptions.
- Each item includes an **Unfollow** action.

## 4. Auto-Follow Behavior

When a logged-in user creates a new topic, the system auto-subscribes that user to the topic.

## 5. Notification Scope

Subscriber merge-tag resolution can include:

- Followers of the topic (for replies)
- Followers of the forum
- Followers of the author (user subscriptions)

The post author is excluded from their own subscriber notification recipient list.

## 6. Technical Notes

- Subscription toggling is handled asynchronously in the front end.
- Subscription records are stored in the plugin subscription table.
