=== Subscribe2 === Contributors: MattyRob, Skippy, RavanH Donate link: http://subscribe2.wordpress.com/donate/ Tags: posts, subscription, email, subscribe, notify, notification Requires at least: 2.0.x Tested up to: 2.8.2 Stable tag: 4.18 Sends a list of subscribers an email notification when new posts are published to your blog == Description == Subscribe2 provides a comprehensive subscription management and email notification system for WordPress blogs that sends email notifications to a list of subscribers when you publish new content to your blog. Email Notifications can be sent on a per-post basis or periodically in a Digest email. Additionally, certain categories can be excluded from inclusion in the notification and post can be excluded on an individual basis by setting a custom field of 's2mail' to 'no'. The format of the email can also be customised for per-post notifications, subscribe2 can generate emails for each of the following formats: * plaintext excerpt * plaintext full post * HTML full post The plugin also handles subscription requests allowing users to publically subscribe by submitting their email address in an easy to use form or to register with your blog which enables greater flexibility over the email content for per-post notifications for the subscriber. Admins are given control over the presentation of the email notifications, can bulk manage subscriptions for users and manually send email notices to subscribers. Subscribe2 supports two classes of subscribers: the general public, and registered users of the blog. The general public may subscribe and unsubscribe. They will receive a limited email notification when new post is made or periodically (unless that post is assigned to one of the excluded categories you defined). The general public will receive a plaintext email with an excerpt of the post: either the excerpt you created when making the post, the portion of text before a tag (if present), or the first 55 words of the post. Registered users of the blog can elect to receive email notifications for specific categories (unless Digest email are select, then it is an opt in or out decision). The Users->Subscription menu item will allow them to select the delivery format (plaintext or HTML), amount of message (excerpt or full post), and the categories to which they want to subscribe. You, the blog owner, have the option (Options->Subscribe2) to allow registered users to subscribe to your excluded categories or not. == Installation == 1. Copy the entire /subscribe2/ directory into your /wp-content/plugins/ directory. 2. Activate the plugin. 3. Click the "Settings" admin menu link, and select "Subscribe2". 4. Configure the options to taste, including the email template and any categories which should be excluded from notification 5. Click the "Manage" admin menu link, and select "Subscribers". 6. Manually subscribe people as you see fit. 7. Create a WordPress Page (http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages) to display the subscription form. When creating the page, you may click the "S2" button on the QuickBar to automatically insert the subscribe2 token. Or, if you prefer, you may manually insert the subscribe2 token: ***Ensure the token is on a line by itself and that it has a blank line above and below.*** This token will automatically be replaced by dynamic subscription information and will display all forms and messages as necessary. 8. In the WordPress "Settings" area for Subscribe2 define the default page ID in the "Appearance" section to the ID of the WordPress page created in step 7. == Frequently Asked Questions == = Which version should I be using, I'm on WordPress x.x.x? = WordPress 2.0.x will be supported until 2010. Subscribe2 will remain supported (but not actively developed) until WordPress 2.0.x is no longer supported. For WordPress 2.0.x use the Subscribe code from the 2.x stable. WordPress 2.1.x and 2.2.x are supported. For the latest information visit http://subscribe2.wordpress.com. For these versions of WordPress use Subscribe2 code from the 3.x stable. Finally, WordPress 2.3 and up are supported. Again, for the latest information visit http://subscribe2.wordpress.com. For this versions of WordPress use Subscribe2 code from the 4.x stable. = How do I upgrade from a previous version? = If you are upgrading from any 2.1.x version of subscribe2, please delete both the /subscribe.php and /wp-content/plugins/subscribe2.php files before copying the new files into place. Your subscriber list will remain intact, and your options should be preserved. Now create a WordPress Page as described above. = Why doesn't the form appear in my WordPress page? = This is usually caused by one of two things. Firstly, it is possible that the form is there but because you haven't logged out of WordPress yourself you are seeing a message about managing your profile instead. Log out of WordPress and it will appear as the subscription form you are probably expecting. Secondly, make sure that the token () is correctly entered in your page with a blank line above and below. The easient way to do this is to deactivate the plugin, visit your WordPress page and view the source. The token should be contained in the source code of the page. If it is not there you either have not correctly entered the token or you have another plguin that is stripping the token from the page code. = Some or all email notifications fail to send, why? = In the first instance check this with your hosting provider, they have access to your server logs and will be able to tell you where and why emails are being blocked. Some hosting providers place a restriction on the maximum number of recipients in any one email message. For example, the venerable Dreamhost (http://www.dreamhost.com/) does not allow any message to contain more than 30 recipients. Subscribe2 provides a facility to work around this restriction by sending batches of emails. To enable this feature, go to Settings->Subscribe2 and located the setting to restrict the number of recipients per email. If this is set to 30 then each outgoing email notification will only contain addresses for 30 recipients. Reminder: because subscribe2 places all recipients in BCC fields, and places the blog admin in the TO field, the blog admin will receive one email per batched delivery. So if you have 90 subscribers, the blog admin should receive three post notification emails, one for each set of 30 BCC recipients. Batches will occur for each group of message as described above. A site on Dreamhost with many public and registered subscribers could conceivably generate a lot of email for your own inbox. = Why is my admin address getting emails from Subscribe2? = This plugin sends emails to your subscribers using the BCC (Blind Cardon Copy) header in email messages. Each email is sent TO: the admin address. There may be emails for a plain text excerpt notification, palin text full text and HTML format emails and additionally if the BCCLIMIT has been set due to hosting restrictions duplicate copies of these emails will be sent to the admin address. = I can't find or insert the Subscribe2 token, help! = If, for some reason the Subscribe2 button does not appear in your browser window try refreshing your browser and cache (Shift and Reload in Firefox). If this still fails then insert the token manually. In the Rich Text Editor (TinyMCE) make sure you switch to the "code" view and type in . = I can't find my subscribers / the options / something else = Subscribe2 creates four (4) new admin menus in the back end of WordPress. * Posts -> Mail Subscribers : Allows users with Publish capabilities to send emails to your current subscribers * Tools -> Subscribers : Allows you to manually (un)subscribe users by email address, displays lists of currently subscribed users and allows you to bulk subscribe Registered Users * Users -> Subscriptions : Allows the currently logged in user to manage their own subscriptions * Settings -> Subscribe2 : Allows administrator level users to control many aspects of the plugins operation. It should be pretty self explanatory from the notes on the screen = I'm confused, what are all the different types of subscriber? = There are basically only 2 types of subscriber. Public Subscribers and Registered Subscribers. Public subscribers have provided their email address for email notification of your new posts. When they enter there address on your site they are sent an email asking them to confirm their request and added to a list of Unconfirmed Subscribers. Once they complete their request by clicking on the link in their email they will become Confirmed Subscribers. Registered Users have registered with your WorPress blog (provided you have enabled this in the core WordPress settings). Once registered they can choose to subscribe to specific categories and can also control the type of email they get by choosing plain text in an excerpt or full post format or a full post format with HTML. == Screenshots == 1. The Posts->Mail Subscribers admin page generated by the plugin. 2. The Tools->Subscribers admin page generated by the plugin. 3. The Users->Subscriptions admin page generated by the plugin. 4. The Options->Subscribe2 admin page generated by the plugin. == Changelog == = Version 4.18 by Matthew Robinson = * Option to sort digest posts in ascending or descending order * Check that plugin options array exists before calling upgrade functions * Improved reliability of the Preview function * Extended Preview function to digest emails * Fixed a code glitch that stopped CATS and TAGS from working * Fixed incorrect sender information is emails are set to come from Post Author * Simplified email notification format options in Users->Subscriptions for per-post notifications * Added Bulk Manage option to update email notification format * Simplified the usermeta database entries from two format variables down to one * Removed trailing spaces from some strings for improved i18n support * Improved Bulk Subscribe and Unsubscribe routines to avoid database artefacts * Moved Select/Deselect All check box to the top of the category list in admin pages * Fixed small layout glitch in Manage->Subscribers screen * Added ChangeLog section to ReadMe to support WordPress.org/extend development = Version 4.17 by Matthew Robinson = * Tested for compatibility with WordPress 2.8.x * Added TAGS and CATS keyword for per-post notification templates * Fixed bug where confirmation emails may have an empty sender field if notifications come from post author * Fixed a bug in WPMU CSS * Added option to exclude new categories by default * Fixed a bug where emails may not be sent to subscribers when a user subscribes or unsubscribes * Improved accessing of 'Admin' level users on blogs where user_level is set below 10 * Added ability to send email previews to currently logged in user from Settings->Subscribe2 * Styled admin menu form buttons to fit with WordPress theme * Improved handling of confirmation sending to reduce errors = Version 4.16 by Matthew Robinson = * Correct minor layout issue in Settings->Subscribe2 * Allow users to define the div class name for the widget for styling purposes * Select from a greater number of notification senders via dropdown list in Settings * Improved efficiency of newly added WordPressMU code * Added ability to manage across-blog subscriptions when using WordPressMU * Fixed bug whereby Public Subscribers may not have got notification emails for posts if Private Posts were blocked * Added ability to define email Subject contents in Settings->Subscribe2 * Sanity checks of email subject and body templates to ensure they are not empty * Introduced s2_html_email and s2_plain_email filters to allow manipulation of email messages after construction * Amended handling of database entries to simplify code and database needs * Improved the layout of the Subscriber drop down menu * Added bullet points to the TABLE of posts * Ensure database remains clean when categories are deleted * Added new option to manage how auto-subscribe handles excluded categories = Version 4.15 by Matthew Robinson = * Fixed E_DEPRECATE warning caused by a variable being passed by reference to the ksort() function * Fixed called to undefined function caused by typo * Fixed a syntax error in the SQL code constructors affecting some users = Version 4.14 by Matthew Robinson = * Reordered some functions to improve grouping * Stop s2mail custom variable being added if empty * Localised 'Send Digest Notification at' string * Add support for template tags in Post->Mail Subscribers emails * Improve handling of translation files for more recent version of WordPress * Implemented