Content Notify 1.6

I accidentally missed posting a blog about Content Notify 1.6 last year, mainly due to moving house.
In a nutshell, this release featured the highly requested ‘keyword search’ field. This allows someone who is subscribing to add a keyword to their subscription which will only send them alerts if that keyword is found in the title or content of a post/page/custom post type. It also contained fixes for a series of long standing minor issues and bugs, making the plugin much more robust.

In case you haven’t see it, here’s the rest of the changelog:

v1.6.3 – 27th September, 2022

• Fixed: The taxonomies cn_form shortcode parameter was sometimes being ignored.
• Fixed: Re-instated some javascript on page load for better compatibility with complex cn_form shortcodes.

v1.6.2 – 26th September, 2022

• Improved: Slightly less javascript load when viewing a page with a cn_form shortcode on.
• Improved: Loading of select2.
• Fixed: The ‘Include Empty Terms’ setting in Subscriptions > Settings > General was being ignored.

v1.6.1 – 13th September, 2022

• Improved: Better compatibility when using the cn_form shortcode in classic and block widgets.
• Improved: Compatibility with Bootstrap 5.2.
• Fixed: A fatal error occurred when using the plugin in conjunction with the Editor widget added by the SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle plugin.

v1.6 – 1st October, 2021

• New: Keyword Search! You can now include a keyword search field by using the search=”” shortcode parameter. Documentation can be found here.
• Improved: AND/OR logic is now much more robust and should work better between multiple taxonomies and terms.
• Improved: All strings inside javascript files in the plugin are now translatable.
• Fixed: Elementor was triggering incorrect alerts when updating a post.
• Fixed: The Block Editor/Gutenberg plugin wasn’t triggering alerts when publishing a new post.
• Fixed: The ‘My Subscriptions’ page was being created for each plugin activation.
• Fixed: The ‘View Subscription’ link in the email that’s sent to admins after new subscription wasn’t valid.
• Fixed: A notice relating to deprecated array_key_exists when using PHP 7.4+.
• All documentation has been updated to cover the changes in this release.

Content Notify 1.7

Content Notify 1.7 is now available which includes another highly requested feature: the ability to exclude specific terms from subscription forms. This works in conjunction with the existing taxonomy exclusion setting, which allows you to exclude specific taxonomies from the subscription form. These two settings should provide a lot of control over what you’d like people to be able to set up subscriptions for.

There are also some compatibility improvements with Bootstrap 5.2, and WordPress 6.0, which was released a few months ago. The minimum version of PHP that the plugin will run on has been bumped up to 7.4 as PHP 7 in general is now considered end-of-life. It is recommended that everyone upgrade to a minimum version of PHP 8.0 soon. In my testing, I haven’t found any issues with Content Notify and PHP 8.
 

What’s Next?

Having a bit more time to work on Content Notify (and Better Notifications for WP) again, I am turning my attention to the roadmap.
A feature that is being regularly requested at the moment is the ability to subscribe to updates for a specific post/page/custom post type. This has been on the roadmap nearly since the first version of the plugin. It’s something I’m currently investigating, with a view to start development soon.

Until next time.