About
This site provides access to the latest version of the Subscribe2 plugin for WordPress. Subscribe2 notifies subscribed users each time a new post is made on any blog running the plugin.
Subscribe2 was originally developed by Skippy and was an update of the subscribe plugin by seriocomic. You can look back at the history of the Subscribe2 plugin at the plugin section on skippy.net.
I started pestering Skippy (real name Scott!) with little issues I was finding while using his plugin and this eventually grew into me beta-testing his new releases and suggesting changes to the code and areas where it could be developed in the future.
Unfortunately, Scott became disillusioned with the unhelpful support requests he was wading through each week and stopped supporting his plugins. After much soul searching I agreed to take on the mantle of developing the plugin.
To ensure that I do not end up the with the same disillusioned outlook as poor Scott please, please don’t expect a response to “It doesn’t work” because it does! It works for me and Scott and loads of other users.
If you can’t get it working then:
- Read the documentation on here and with the plugin
- Check the WordPress Support forum
- Read the Trouble Shooting Page
- Finally, contact me with as many details as you can provide
If you can do all of the above I will hopefully remain sane and may be able to help you.
November 9, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Hi. Thanks for the excellent plugin, which I’ve ALMOST got working in WordPress. Mostly it’s fine, brilliant in fact, but I think there’s a glitch in the subscribe/unsubscribe facility. On my site, under IE6, when a user responds to the confirmation email I get a page showing not only the “thank you!” message but also the text content of all my other pages too. Any idea what’s causing this? Please feel free to check it on my site http://www.entangled.org
Also, I was wondering whether there’s a way to restrict email circulation to, say, once a week? So rather than getting a new email for each post, users would receive a compilation of the week’s posts. Is there a way to do this? My programming “skills” barely merit the name, so any help would be much appreciated!
Many thanks,
Nick
November 9, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Nick,
What you are describing normally happens if you haven’t changed the S2PAGE variable in the code.
WordPress gives each page and post a unique ID number - you need to tell Subscribe2 which page you have defined as your subscription page.
November 10, 2006 at 1:22 am
Many thanks — it’s working fine now. Much appreciated. As for the other question — is it possible to create a weekly, rather than daily, digest?
November 10, 2006 at 8:04 am
Nick,
Glad that’s fixed it for you.
Weekly Digests are not possible because the plugin uses WP-Cron to send the posts and there is no weekly task in WP-Cron but..
Cron is being built into the WordPress Core code so it may be possible when 2.1 is released.
December 8, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Hello,
Wonderful plugin–thanks so much for your dedicated work!
Just one question: it doesn’t seem to email subscribers when you date a post for the future. Is this a bug? A feature for an upcoming version? Impossible? (Please email me and let me know. I use the future-posting thing a lot.)
December 8, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Ashiq,
Future Post and Daily Digest functions both rely upon also having the WP-Cron plugin activated on your site. WP-Cron is available at http://www.skippy.net
December 29, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Thanks for contributing your time and labor to keep WordPress growing and evolving through plugins. I have a humble suggestion. I’m trying to look at all availlable plugins to see which to install in a new blog, and I can’t tell what this plugin does. Obviously I get that you can subscribe and get emails, but of what is unclear. I’ve seen plugins for comments, posts, etc., but I can’t find anything here that explains what Subscribe2 does. I’ve probably missed it and, if so, I’m sorry.
If not, you might add a short paragraph to the About page that talks a little about the functionality of the plugin, pehaps before the history section. Similarly, you might create a true FAQ, since, for the new user, it’s a bit confusing scrolling through the FAQ categories.
Anyway, I hope these are encouraging comments, rather than complaints. I’ll keep looking and maybe look on skippy’s site, via the history paragraphs in the About page, to see if it’s explained there. Thanks!
December 29, 2006 at 3:50 pm
I think I found an explanation under via the Plugin menu. Thanks. Since this entire site is about Subscribe2, I assumed Plugin and Widget were ways to access info about the two ipmoementations. Maybe add, or move, the Plugin lead to the About page? Anyway, thanks for all the hard work. It’s generous and appreciated.
December 29, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Rich,
Thanks for the feedback - I’ll make an amendment to the “About” post.
As for the FAQs - there’s not much I can do about the layout as this site is hosted on WordPress.com and the structure is therefore pre-defined (but on the updise it’s free!)
December 31, 2006 at 3:18 am
Sure thing! I didn’t want to suggest a bunch of new work for you. I just meant you could create a standard FAQ as a page. It’s a lot easier just to add the FAQ category, of course. Thanks again. I’m trying Subscribe2 this weekend.
January 5, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I really like the plugin, thanks for maintaining it!
January 17, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Quick heads up…
The SMTP plugin has changed its link to
http://www.shiftthis.net/wordpress-swift-smtp-plugin/
Thanks for all the great work!
May 3, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Hi,
I have a question for you…I hope you can help me understand this plugin a little better. When I go into Manage, then over to Subscribers, then filter to show the Public Subscribers, it shows me 3 email addresses. Two are in the middle (meaning they are confirmed) and one on the right (unconfirmed). Can you tell me, how does that unconfirmed email address get there? Did that person fill out their email address on my blog but they haven’t confirmed their subscription to the blog?
Do you know what I am trying to ask?
Basically…does this mean that they haven’t clicked on the link in the email they should have received to confirm their subscription, or maybe that they didn’t receive the email asking them to confirm at all?
Does this sound correct?
May 3, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Tracee,
You are quite right in your assumptions, a public user who remains on the right is one who has not clicked to confirm their subcription. You can choose to delete them or subscribe them anyway or send a reminder if you filter on Unconfirmed Subscribers.
May 3, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Also, if a person submits their email address to subscribe to the blog, it doesn’t email them when a new post has been made. Even if they are confirmed. It only emails the person if they are a registered user of the blog. Why would that happen?
Does that have something to do with what Beth was talking about?
Please help!!!
May 3, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Just in case you would like to see the blog, it is http://www.jamiecollinsphotography.com/forum
Thanks in advance for the help!
May 3, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Tracee,
It could be the same problem Beth experienced, try her workaround and see if it helps. Also, contact your host and ask them why the emails are not being sent.
May 3, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Sorry, one more question, is there a way for people to receive an email when a comment is made? Or is this just for new posts? It would be nice if it would send an email to them if they are subscribed even if it is a new comment rather than just when it’s a post.
I do have the subscribe to comments plugin added to the site too, but that’s not quite the same as what I am wondering.
May 3, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Also, what type of page does that code possibily need to be edited on, the code that you posted about with Beth’s comments.
Sorry for all the questions, but I’d really like to get this to work for us!
May 3, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Tracee,
Users can get emails for comments with the Subscribe-To-Comments. As it is written by someone else and I don’t use it on my site I have no idea how it works.
The edits need to be made in the subscribe2.php file that you uploaded to your server, not in a WordPress page. Do this locally and upload via FTP (or use the Plugin Editor in WordPress).
May 24, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Hi!
I currently have close to 500 subscribers which is the maximum number of emails per hour that my server allows. I searched for a setting in my Subscribe2 options that will tell it to send emails in increments of 500 per hour but couldn’t find anything. Any ideas how I can do this?
Also, is there a “maximum” number of subscribers that Subscribe2 can handle? ie, can it manage thousands of subscribers?
thanks!
Saint Agnes
May 24, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Saint Agnes,
You are basically asking about throttling for sending of emails - this is not something currently on offer in the code.
I tried using PEAR to accomplish the same and managed it before eventually moving to VPS and avoiding the limitations of hosted server options.
In theory there is no maximum in Subscribe2 - the limits are imposed by hosts and server hardware.
October 6, 2007 at 2:40 pm
hi I like your Recent Comments plugin
How did you add avatars to it? was look all over the net but didn’t find 
You are my last chance.
October 6, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Michael,
The Recent Comments widget is a core part of WordPress.com. It’s not a p;ugin that I’ve added. There is a post about is here, I hope it helps you.
October 24, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Regarding Subscribe2–any chance at all you can modify it to handle multiple mailing lists (and display multiple forms)? The only plugins I’ve found that can do this are commercial; I thought I might modify yours, but maybe you have something in the works already
So, can you add this functionality? Pretty please? I’ll even help out, if you want …
October 26, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Ashiq,
Subscribe2 already handles plain text and HTML email for registered users and in this way does cater to differing mailing lists.
It does what I need it to and I would not be interested in developing it massivley in the way I think you are suggesting - but the code is free so feel at liberty to make any changes yourself to get what you are after.
November 20, 2007 at 5:53 am
Hi,
I just wanted to thank you for the great WordPress plugin. This is what I really wanted to have for my blog. It’s said that Blogs are “pull” and Emails are “push”, so with subscribe2, we can have both PUSH and PULL.
This has big potential for our internet marketing, I think.
Again, I appreciate your effort for that,
December 7, 2007 at 12:19 am
[...] Subscribe2 Plugin Subscribe2 notifies subscribed users each time a new post is made on any blog running the plugin. (tags: wordpress plugins) [...]
December 11, 2007 at 5:21 pm
I hope your plugin can help me but I’m not sure.
I’ve a blog with a lot of users. They can introduce a post but only the best posts are published.
I’d like a plugin that will send an email of notify only to the user that his post was published.
Can your plugin help me?
Thanks
December 11, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Fabrizio,
Subscribe2 only sends an email notification when a post is published so it should meet your needs very nicely.
December 12, 2007 at 10:52 am
Only to the author of the post?
Thanks
December 12, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Fabrizio,
Once the plugin is installed you can go to Manage->Subscribers and subscribe all Registered Users of your blog to get emails notification based on categories, so any new post in that category will go to ALL users not just the author.
December 13, 2007 at 9:13 pm
this may be a completely silly question, but i couldn’t find anyone talking about it on the other pages. is this plugin supposed to automatically email my subscribers when i publish? mine doesn’t do that. any advise?
December 13, 2007 at 9:25 pm
i tried the ‘mail test’ plugin and i got a bunch of emails, so that portion is working. i’m not sure what to do or where to look to get it working properly.
December 15, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Stephanie,
If the test plugin works but Subscribe2 doesn’t then it’s down to restrictions in place on your server related to the sending of emails. Check with your host what restrictions are in place and find a work around for your needs.
December 18, 2007 at 9:53 pm
I have implemented the site and it is working very well so far. I have noticed that the navigation bar on the “confirmation” page is acting strangely. Is this becuase I have not set the S2PAGE variable in subscribe2.php properly? If so, how do you actually set it? I am assuming it is something that I do to this line here:
define(’S2PAGE’, ‘0′);
I am new to this so thanks for your patience and excellent plugin.
December 19, 2007 at 9:29 am
Gary,
In the installation instructions you are asked to create a WordPress page. This page will have an ID listed in Manage->Pages. Take this ID number and replace the zero on the line you’ve found with this number.
March 25, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Hi,
I successfully installed the the latest version of Subscribe2… thank you for making such an easy-to-use tool. I noticed, however, that there’s no real info on this website or in the docs about security, specifically whether Subscribe2 includes code to prevent SQL injection attacks.
Could you please briefly outline Subscribe2’s security features?
Thanks in advance for any information,
Andrea
March 25, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Andrea,
All of the admin pages created by the plugin fully utilise the built in WordPress wp_nonce functions and the form for submission of email addresses validates input to ensure the entry is an email address using the is_email function.
That said I’d be happy to listen to any security advice from anyone who thinks the plugin could be made safer
March 25, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Sounds good… thanks for the quick reply!
March 26, 2008 at 8:55 am
Hello,
I suggest to have a notification for new “private” post ou page for the “Registered Subscribers” only.
Thanks to you to add this simple feature !
March 26, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Guilaume,
Good point, if a post is marked as private then notifications should not go out to public subscribers, only registered subscriber to the categories. That’s easy enough to implement for the ‘per post’ notifications. I’ll get that into the next version.
March 26, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Thanks !
I hope you make that for private page also.
March 26, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Guillaume,
I think the code I’ve changed will work for both. I’ll check the changes into the SVN server tonight - would you be willing to test a new version?
March 26, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Yes, but i hope there are other testers ! I’m not a specialist …
You send the new version to my mail adress ?
April 12, 2008 at 3:11 am
I’m using Subscribe2 under WordPress 2.5 and all of a sudden it has started sending two duplicate messages at a time to each subscriber per post. Has anyone else reported this? I don’t want to get blacked listed for spam!
-Wayne
April 12, 2008 at 3:12 am
OOPS! I’m using version 4.5
-Wayne
April 13, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Wayne,
Are you using Digest emails? If so I think this is linked to the CRON function of WordPress and I’ve never found a fix.
April 14, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I’m using regular pop & sntp mail
April 14, 2008 at 5:51 pm
The problem has actually slowed down. Now it happens every 4 or 5 messages but I don’t dare turn on my rss feeds because the last time I did this I got 36 articles in and my system sent out 72 messages to all my subscribers..
-Wayne
April 14, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Wayne,
Your RSS should have nothing to do with Subscribe2 unless your site publishes content direction from the RSS feeds of other sites. Have you set Subscribe2 to use Digest Emails or Per-Post emails? Look in Options->Subscribe2.
April 15, 2008 at 1:24 am
My settings are set to per post and yes my rss feeds publish directly to my blog. I’ve change the configuration to publish to draft and then post them one at a time manually until I can get a handle on the double mailings. But like I said it is now only once in a while
-Wayne
April 15, 2008 at 9:15 am
Wayne,
It’s probably to do with the setup of your blog publishing from RSS. Subscribe2 was written aimed at human writers.
April 26, 2008 at 6:38 am
Hi, Thank you so much for this plugin. I’ve used it for a while and it’s a lifesaver.
I have a private WP blog and use Angsuman’s Authenticated WordPress Plugin to limit access. I recently upgraded to WP 2.5, then 2.5.1. Prior to upgrading, my site’s members were receiving emails based on post category more or less consistently (any issues I put down to spam rules, though I was never able to confirm).
Now that I’m on the latest WP, I am the only one receiving any notifications at all. (This happened on both 2.5 and 2.5.1). I have Subscribe2 2.6 installed, and have activated it and the debug plugin. I don’t see anything on the debug page which looks like it could help. Do you have any ideas?
Thank you!!
Michelle
April 26, 2008 at 11:04 am
Michelle,
Have you tried reverting to using mail() in the plugin rather than wp_mail()?
May 1, 2008 at 7:51 am
I’ve just started to use Subscribe2 and have set it up to send out an email once a week.
I was curious to notice that the first mail it has sent out notified subscribers of only one post - I had imagined it would include all of my posts from the previous week, which would have been about right, I think, for a weblog delivering nice to know rather than need to know information!
I’ve looked around and have been unable to find a relevant dashboard control - so is the choice to alert subscribers to each and every post or just one each week please?
Thanks,
Gavin
May 1, 2008 at 10:13 am
Gavin,
The plugin should send a notice of all posts made since the last notification or when the plugin was installed. If you only installed and then made one post that may explain what you’ve seen. See what happens next week and it should work as you expect.
May 1, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Thanks - I hadn’t thought of that possibility!
Gav