Anyone know of an easy way to notify users when a new blog entry appears?

yeah, tell them to read the RSS-feed ;)

[url=http://www.rssreader.com/]RSSReader is Free, ya know, and it works great[/url]

While I'm all keen on doing what's cool and all I do prefer such an email notification feature to be added to b2. It's the only thing I miss from MT and would definitely increase it's appeal to others and encourage them to make the switch.

There's nothing quite like answering a question with unsolicited advice.

yeah, tell them to read the RSS-feed Wink

While I'm all for RSS and syndication, there still exists a large number of people who have no idea what it is. I also agree that things will be great when they do, and they should be educated. But, for example, I am not going to tell my mom who is clueless about computers to go download RSSReader or any other aggregator so that she can check if I've updated. She knows how to email quite well, and that type of solution would be best for a lot of others as well.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you Mark. b2evo really needs two things to be head-and-shoulders above where it is now:
1. An RSS reader. (Like, the ability to show the posts from an outside RSS feed in the system somewhere.)
2. A mailing list.

I'm really not a big fan of saying, "Oh, you want it to do X, Y, and Z? Well, get these other programs that do X and Y, and those are better than Z anyway."

OTOH, of course, it's work.

I read in another post somewhere that one of the devs said "This will be implemented in the core," but that was a couple of months ago. This is the feature I've been waiting on before sending my blog live. I wonder what the status is.....

Status:
On the ToDo list. Not implemented yet.

We're badly short-staffed, and what staff we do have (like me!) all have other paying jobs that come first. Are you a PHP programmer? Would you like to help out? ;)

I just did it on a dirty way....

Nevertheless open file edit_actions.php in admin

search for :

echo '<div class="panelinfo"><p>', T_('Posting Done...'), "</p></div>\n";

and paste this : (please replace your Blogname and the @email-addys with yours ;-))

// Start Hack email-Notification by mikel


$blog_mail_comment="New Posting in your Blog";
$blog_mail_content .= "There's somtehting new in your blog \n";
$blog_mail_content .= " \n";
$blog_mail_content .= " \n";
$blog_mail_content .= "$post_title \n";
$blog_mail_content .= " \n";
$blog_mail_content .= "$content \n";
$blog_mail_content .= " \n";
$blog_mail_content .= "------------------------------ \n";
$blog_mail_content .= "from the best blog on earth ;-) \n";
$blog_mail_content .= "Your blog";


mail('blog@dideldum.com', $blog_mail_comment, $blog_mail_content, "From: webmaster@dideldum.com\nReply-To:webmaster@dideldum.com\nX-Mailer:php-yourblog");

// End Hack email-Notification by mikel

Yeah it could be continued....arrays of notifier, database-things...but it fits for me...

greetings

mikel

Uhm, we're all looking for a email notification hack for people to subscribe to, like MT, so that when you post a new entry people who have subscribed to your blog can be notified there's a new blog entry up. Yours doesn't do that and trust me there will be many happy b2 users that will be happy once this feature is added or a workaround presents itself. Your hack doesn't do that *sigh*

quard wrote:

Uhm, we're all looking for a email notification hack for people to subscribe to, like MT, so that when you post a new entry people who have subscribed to your blog can be notified there's a new blog entry up. Yours doesn't do that and trust me there will be many happy b2 users that will be happy...

E-mail notifications are past. Yes, they work and people are used to them, but they have a number of troubles:

1) blog then needs to keep a list of e-mail addresses of subscribers and what they are subscribed to. not too much trouble, but somebody has to code that and we have to store information that is not really so needed. - it is too easy to install an RSS reader for someone to complain they don't get it.

2) people may be reuluctant to give e-mail addresses. even if they do, there is a risk of someone hacking the blog site and stealing them. Why should I give away my e-mail address at every interesting site?

3) SPAM - there is so much spam in e-mail and so many e-mail messages coming to me it is most probably that I would ignore the notifications about new posts even if they came to me.

All in all I do not think e-mail notifications are such a _killer_feature_ that will make people happy. It would be useful, yes. But the number of happy people from this feature is overestimated I think.

RSS aggregator functionality in b2evo would also be necessary - to have a web page aggregating all the RSS feeds that are of interest to you.

try this for a xml-reader to include xml-things..
it works !

http://www.php-resource.de/inc/counthit.php?LKID=5573

:D mikel

captsolo wrote:

E-mail notifications are past. Yes, they work and people are used to them, but they have a number of troubles:

and we should not forget that in some countries there are laws how a newsletter - nothing else would be a notification mail - has to be handled. for example in germany you have to use 3-way-subscribe-process :

- user A subscribes
- the notification script has to send out a mail "hello, you are going to subscribe to ... do you really want it? if so click this link and verify it"
- user A has to verify the subscribe
- the script has to send out a mail "hello, now you have subscribed to ... if this is a mistake please click this link"
- now there can be send notification mails but all of them has to provide a link to unsubscribe easily.

and if the script is making a fault and adds someone who don't wants it, he can sue for damage.
i dont' know how it is in other countries.
but that's why notification mails sucks - too much things to handle - and XML-feeds rocks - because everybody can subscribe to them easily.

I beg to differ that email notification is not needed. Yeah, sure it's much easier to come up with reasons features aren't added, ad infinitum but seriously if that attitude was dominant here we wouldn't be asking or running what we're running. Wordpress, MT and other packages have it, people definitely want it and things like this definitely add to the appeal to people adopting a package. Anything that helps people adopt a product or make it easier to use increases its adoptability by end users. Especially when the features added makes things easier for the person running b2 as well as the people that read it. I bet if we argued this, it'd take much more time and effort than adding email notification to b2 for the smart people who are working on it.

XML feeds is a more than one step workaround, not a solution.

Features, especially ones that are commonly used elsewhere and are helpful only increase this product's usefulness. Features that aren't there increase the chances of someone using something else and people such as myself want b2 to be the new blog leader and maintain that lead when it gets there.

quard wrote:

XML feeds is a more than one step workaround, not a solution.

why? most browser (opera, firefox) can read feeds and it's much easier und quicker to add a feed to them then subscribe to a blog, confirm it and later unsubscribe again.

i think that mail notification is just an old possibility to stay up-to-date. today feeds are the much better way. but i know, there are also people these days who are riding from one city to another instead using a car ;) just my 2 cent

The simpler or fewer the steps the better for everyone. Email notification does not require the end user to do anything save sign up. No settings to check, plugins to download and install etc. Of course we all know that nowadays the smarter user is the rule not the exception :roll: That's why no one uses IE or Outlook anymore, everyone uses the latest browser with all the features and no one gets virii browsing websites.

Sure when RSS is truly the future and we're all in our space cars travelling to the Milky Way galaxy with the Jetsons then we can talk about how no one uses such a tiresome antiquated solution as that difficult and confusing email account anymore... :lol:

quard wrote:

The simpler or fewer the steps the better for everyone. Email notification does not require the end user to do anything save sign up.

the end user has. the minimum is that he has to verify his mailadress - something like "you have subscribed to .... is that ok?". because if you don't make sure that the mailadress is the one of the subscriber, everybody can use it to tease other people by using their mailadress.

Kiesow,

I was thinking that we'd do it like this some day:
1. When the user signs up, they enter an email address, but no password.
2. Send them a "verification" email with their password.
3. Need to log in with the password to get in, and then they can change their password.
4. Need to log in to subscribe to a blog/category/post.

That way, we wrap up secure registration, email verification, and subscription all in one.

Got any free time? Wanna work on this? (nudge, nudge) ;)

We'll take a simple sign me up if it'll make it in an updated version quicker. Or give the owner the option of doing it that way or the more involved way you just listed. More options / flexability are always appreciated!

isaac wrote:

Kiesow,

I was thinking that we'd do it like this some day:
1. When the user signs up, they enter an email address, but no password.
2. Send them a "verification" email with their password.
3. Need to log in with the password to get in, and then they can change their password.
4. Need to log in to subscribe to a blog/category/post.

That way, we wrap up secure registration, email verification, and subscription all in one.

that would be lawfully ok (for germany)

isaac wrote:

Got any free time? Wanna work on this? (nudge, nudge) ;)

ask some of the people who needs it :>
my readers haven't asked for any mail subscription yet. they all use the much easier way by using the feeds :lol:

I'm mostly just interested because then we can start getting b2evo out there to replace the other listserv progs. Send mail to the b2evo getmail addr, set up the getmail.php as a cronjob, and let people sign up to different "Lists" (blogs).

So,

You'd have a:
1. Blog
2. RSS
3. Listserv
all running from the same software, with the same data. I could see a lot of uses for this.

But, I have too much work already that pays me, and b2evo gets way too little of my time.