No New Post Notification Email

[DavidC]

I just observed that the subscribed user is not receiving email notifications when a new post is made to the blog.
Where should I begin looking for that, please?
Thanks!

[onli]

How did you implement the post notification subscription?

[DavidC]

I see this plugin, but it doesn't sound like what you're referring to:

Announce entries
serendipity_event_weblogping
version 1.10.1 (GPL, Last Updated 2025-03-01)
Serendipity Team
Serendipity >= 2.4
Send notification of new entries to online services

I'm not sure where else to look ...

[onli]

I think you looked at the right place, but to my knowledge this functionality is missing. That is why I was surprised about the "subscribed users" - the registered users are not subscribed to new entries, I thought.

To add it to s9y is not that easy, that subscription would have to be managed with an opt-in function, and an unsubscribe option in the mails.

You alternatively do have the RSS feed, which users can use to be notified about new entries in a feedreader. With services like https://blogtrottr.com/ they can also get an email instead. I think that https://www.mailerlite.com/features/rss-to-email allows you to present a signup form in your blog, but I haven't used that myself.

Having that function in serendipity would be a good enhancement though.

[DavidC]

Wow, I didn't know that any blog lacked that feature. I'm surprised that no one has created a plugin for it.

I'd rather the blog not be dependent on another provider https://blogtrottr.com/ or https://www.mailerlite.com/features/rss-to-email for this functionality.

I'll look at what Bluehost offers - that way there's only Serendipity and Bluehost to deal with and not even more external dependencies that may come and go.

Thanks for clarifying this.

[DavidC]

Bluehost uses smtp.oxcs.bluehost.com as the SMTP server for sending emails.

When setting up the SMTP server, you should use the following details:

SMTP Host: smtp.oxcs.bluehost.com
SMTP Port: 465 (for SSL/TLS)
SMTP Username: Your full email address (name@domain.com)
SMTP Password: Your mailbox password
Additionally, it is recommended to use SSL/TLS for securing the connection between your email client and the mail server.

[DavidC]

BTW: When I click on SAVE after adding a new post - there's a pop-up that says it is sending notifications. Why would it say that if it's not actually doing that?

Serendipity is now saving your entry, sending emails to subscribers, creating trackbacks and performing possible XML-RPC calls. This may take a while..

[onli]

Oh, right. That's a mistake. Why it happened: A dev wanted to implement a subscription feature, but we couldn't agree on the implementation. It seems like the language constant changes were added anyway. I'll open a bug - though maybe this can be used as an occasion to just implement the subscription in a different way.

To the bluehost message: That your hoster has an email server is normal, it's probably already used for the comment notification and user registration emails. But that does not help if serendipity has no mechanism to register for those notification emails and to send them. This is not as strange given the context here, with RSS feeds being the historically normal way to subscribe to blogs and the significant legal dangers of sending out (potentially unwanted) email subscriptions in Germany.

[DavidC]

Oh, right. That's a mistake. Why it happened: A dev wanted to implement a subscription feature, but we couldn't agree on the implementation. It seems like the language constant changes were added anyway. I'll open a bug - though maybe this can be used as an occasion to just implement the subscription in a different way.

That would be awesome!

Thanks!

[DavidC]

Just checking-in.
Has there been any response to your email notification "bug" report, please?

[onli]

Hey David. https://github.com/s9y/Serendipity/issues/900 is the issue to track. Please don't expect too fast a resolution, either I or another dev would need to invest quite some time here, and I'm knee deep in a different project for the moment.

[DavidC]

Understood.
I sure hope someone doesn't just remove the message and abandon the feature.
I wish I had the skills to fix this myself.
Is it possible that code from another open source project could be modified for the purpose, rather than building something from scratch?
Lots of other blogs have email notifications and a whole bunch of them are now abandonware - and were open source.
This list of apparently-abandoned blog platforms that haven't been updated "... for more than two years and may no longer be maintained or supported by the script vendor" comes from the Softaculous installer on Bluehost:
Pubvana
Textpattern
b2evolution
Nibbleblog
Nucleus
Chyrp (Note: Chryp Lite is reportedly still actively updated.)
PivotX
Leafpub
Is there a checklist or template for modifying a plugin for Serendipity?

[onli]

We do have https://docs.s9y.org/docs/developers/plugin-api.html, but porting a plugin is not a simple checklist, and integrating an existing solution is not all that realistic - they'll likely differ a lot. But if you know how to program, even if not on an advanced level, serendipity is a good environment to implement function via plugins or (backwards compatible) changes to the core. Maybe the email subscription could indeed be done via a plugin and does not have to be all that complicated, someone just has to sit down and work out the interface and how it should behave in detail.

[DavidC]

Do I correctly presume that this piece of Configuration is embedded in the Theme?

Update notification
Show the update notification in the Dashboard, and for which channel?

(Choices are Stable, Beta, and No) - so, it can be toggled off.
Is it fair to presume that nothing happens if Beta is selected?
Would a plugin for this be, initially, activated by the Beta selection?
Then, once debugged, changed to Stable?

[onli]

Different kind of updates ;) This setting is about a notification in the backend about a new available serendipity version.Note the usage of beta - this refers to test versions of software.

Do I correctly presume that this piece of Configuration is embedded in the Theme?

There is no configuration for new entry notifications yet. Where I'd expect it, when implemented, is in the general configuration settings, or the plugin sections if implemented via a plugin. Though right, how to present it could be something themes might want to influence.