Version 1.3 sees some great new features in Content Notify. I’m continuing to build on the base of the plugin to add features that you’d expect in an email subscriptions-based offering but would have delayed the initial release back in August of this year.

This release mainly focuses on allowing the subscriber to manage their subscriptions from a specific page, enhancements in the form shortcode, and allowing a subscriber to sign-up for alerts for both newly published and updated content in the same subscription.

Manage Your Subscriptions

Subscribers can now manage their own subscriptions by viewing or unsubscribing from them. When the [cn_subscriptions] shortcode is used on a page, this will output a table of all subscriptions that match the logged-in user’s email address.
Additionally, this table is shown immediately after unsubscribing from another subscription. This adds greater compliancy with CAN-SPAM regulations.

Form Shortcode Improvements

You can now set the taxonomy shortcode parameter to ‘auto’ in order to hide the field and pre-select the first term of the first taxonomy available to the post type selected. This is handy for smaller sites or for blogs that post to a single category. E.g. [cn_form post_types="post" taxonomies="auto"]. Additionally, the taxonomies field can be hidden all-together by setting the parameter to ‘false’.

There’s a new user_fields shortcode parameter that will hide the first name, last name, and email address fields if the user is logged when set to ‘false’. The first name and email address always needs to be populated in order to full-fill the requirements of a subscription so if these fields aren’t populated in the user’s profile for some reason, these fields will still show. Additionally, it will show if the user is logged out, even if this parameter is set.

Single Subscription for Published and Updated

Previously, if you wanted to be alerted of newly published and updated posts/pages/custom post types, you’d need to create two subscriptions – one for each status. You can now be alerted for both in the same subscription. In fact, it’s now the default option.

Automatic Updates

The plugin will now completely auto-update itself when new updates are released, providing that you have version 1.3.1 or greater installed. This can be disabled in the WP Admin > Plugins screen should you still wish to stay in control over plugin updates though.

As usual, a smattering of minor bug fixes and improvements are also present throughout the plugin. v1.3.1 and v1.3.2 have also been subsequently released in the same week which took care of some bugs that appeared as a result of the 1.3 release. I’m pleased that I’ve been able to stay on top of any bugs and fix them, usually within a few hours of them being reported.

Until next time.