Content Notify 1.13 was recently released and whilst not a particularly interesting release, it has a number of useful features which aid in privacy compliancy.
WordPress Privacy Exporter/Eraser
Content Notify is now fully integrated into the built-in WordPress Privacy Exporter and Data Erasure features found in WP Admin > Tools > Export Personal Data and Erase Personal Data. This is vital functionality which, providing the plugin collects user-related data in some way, is a must for any plugin. It took Content Notify a few releases to get there but it’s now included and works well. This helps improve the compliancy of the plugin with regards to various privacy laws around the world which require users be able to export and erase their data themselves easily.
Uninstall Options
When you uninstall most plugins, a lot of data is left behind. I didn’t want this for Content Notify so now, there are new options that allow you to remove all traces of the plugin if you wish. This applies to all options and subscribers. I decided to leave the pages it creates alone as those may have been changed or customised and letting a plugin delete a site’s pages seemed like a risky thing to me so I’ve left that for the admin to decide on what to do. These options can be found in Subscriptions > Settings > Misc in the plugin.
Unsubscribe All
Subscribers can now unsubscribe from all of their subscriptions using a single ‘Unsubscribe All’ button when on the My Subscriptions page (also shown after verifying or unsubscribing from a link at the bottom of an email alert). This adds further compliance to the plugin for various privacy laws around the world as some of them require this functionality.
Minor Fixes & Improvements
There were a few minor bug fixes in this release too but a small improvement (not worthy of it’s own heading) is that an admin can now verify an unverified subscription direction from the All Subscriptions screen. Prior to this, they had to click the subscription to edit it, then verify it. This just speeds up that process a bit and adds to the overall UX of the plugin – something I’ve constantly working on.
What’s Next
In my opinion, Content Notify now has all of the bare minimum components that any WordPress plugin should have, including the new export/erase/uninstall functionality. From now on, I hope to just be added features and fixing bugs. The plugin has now been around for nearly 3-years and in that time, the reliability of the core functionality of the plugin has been good and only gotten better.
In the next version, I’ll be adding the next highly requested feature – a form builder. This most likely won’t be the best version of a form builder, but it will be a welcome relief from manually writing cn_form shortcodes.
Until next time!
