The topbar notification bell shows platform events: content publishes, plugin activity, security events, and more. Notifications have three states: unread, seen, and read.
Beginner
Unread → Seen → Read
- Unread — Accent badge count; unread rows show a dot and stronger styling.
- Seen — Opening the dropdown marks visible items as seen. The badge turns grey even if you did not click an item.
- Read — Clicking a notification or using Mark all read sets
read_atand persists read state.
Seen state is per user and stored alongside read IDs in the notifications store.
Advanced Users
API: POST /api/notifications.php with action=mark_seen and visible notification IDs when the dropdown opens. Responses include badge_state: unread, seen, or none, and pending_count for accent display.
Plugin activity: Commerce and other plugins can emit to the plugin activity bus; those items appear in the bell when activity_notify is enabled for the plugin.