This guide will show you how to implement the Content Notify solution so your website users can easily stay on top of content changes they are interested in.
While solutions like OneSignal allow you to push out notifications, Content Notify puts the power in the hands of the user, allowing them to decide which content updates they want to hear about.
Rather than have your users return to your website over and over only to be disappointed by the lack of specific content they are looking for, let them know ahead of time that something of interest is ready and waiting for them.
- Listings added or updated for a specific Listing Type, Region, etc.
- Products added or updated for a specific category.
- Blog post added or updated by a specific author.
- …and countless other combinations.
Install Content Notify
- Purchase Content Notify.
- Pull up your license key and download the plugin from the Purchase History area of your account.
- Install and activate the plugin.
- Subscriptions > Settings > Add your license key and activate it.
Verify / Unsubscribe Redirection Page
Once the plugin is activated, a new page named ‘Subscription Message’ is automatically created, and the required shortcode is automatically added. The Subscription Message page is where users will verify their email subscriptions or unsubscribe to an existing subscription.
When a user creates a new email subscription, they will receive an opt-in email with a link at the bottom that routes to the Subscription Message page.
Note: This page should be excluded from indexing, using your SEO plugin, or any other methods you use to prevent content indexing.
Sending
If your business must adhere to certain legal compliance and/or you want to apply your branding to the emails that Content Notify sends out to your users, be sure to check out the settings under Subscriptions > Settings > Sending.
Content Notify Shortcodes
Core Shortcode
[cn_form]
This is the core shortcode of Content Notify, which unlocks all of the subscription fields for the end-user to use, which may or may not be desirable.
As the website owner, when you are first starting out with Content Notify, dropping this shortcode onto a page helps you quickly see all of the possibilities for filtering, field display, etc.
Available Shortcode Parameters
post_types=""
This parameter is used to control the selections of the Notify When field, which directly relates to the Post Types (Pages, Posts, Listings, Products, etc.) on your MyListing website.
You can use a single selection (e.g., “job_listing”) or a comma-separated list (e.g., “job_listing, posts”).
For example, if you wanted to add a form limited to just Listings, your shortcode would be as follows.
[cn_form post_types="job_listing"]
You can also use ‘auto’ or ‘false’ to let Content Notify automatically detect the post type where you’ve placed your form, select it, and then hide the Notify When field to make it that much easier on your users.
For example, if you added a form to your Single Listings using the shortcode shown below, Content Notify would identify ‘job-listing’ as the Post Type, select it, and then hide the Notify When field.
[cn_form post_types="auto"]
As seen in the image below, the ‘Notify When’ field has already been selected for the end user and removed from the form.
status=""
This parameter is used to control the selections of the ‘Are’ field, which directly relates to when a particular Post Type is either Published or Updated.
For example, if you wanted to add a form limited to newly-published listings, your shortcode would be as follows.
[cn_form post_types="job_listing" status="published"]
Note: At the time of this writing, the ability to choose both published and updated is not available, but the developer is working on adding that feature to the plugin. However, if you set your shortcode to a status of ‘update’, the user will get alerted for both new and updated Listings.
taxonomies=""
This parameter controls the selections of the ‘In’ field, which directly relates to general WordPress taxonomies (Post/Product Categories, Post/Product Tags, etc.) and taxonomies that MyListing website owners are familiar with (Categories, Regions, Tags, etc.).
For example, if you wanted to add a form limited to Listings that are newly published under either the ‘actors’ or ‘local’ category (i.e., Taxonomy), your shortcode would be as follows.
[cn_form post_types="posts" status="published" authors="jack"]
Note: As of this writing, the automatic selection of Taxonomies is not available but is coming in the next release of the plugin.
authors=""
This parameter controls the selections of the ‘By’ field, which directly relates to the author of any WordPress taxonomy.
For example, if you wanted to add a form limited to Posts that are newly published by an author named ‘Jack’, your shortcode would be as follows.
[cn_form post_types="posts" status="published" authors="jack"]
Single Listing Notifications
This is where the true magic comes into play for MyListing websites!
One of the more frequent requests to come across my desk is the ability to alert users when Listings are added or updated, and this now becomes a reality with Content Notify.
Notifications for All Listings
If you have a MyListing website with only one Listing Type, this is a slam dunk, and all the functionality is included with the cost of the core plugin.
This is possible because of the time I spent working with the developer to get things working correctly with the MyListing theme.
Implementation
- Edit your Listing Type.
- Single Page > Content & Tabs.
- Add a ‘Shortcode’ block to either an existing tab or a new tab.
- In the content area of the shortcode block, add what’s shown in the screenshot below.
Once the above steps are completed, you should see what is shown in the screenshot below on all your Listings.
Subscription Testing
- Browse to one of your Listings.
- Enter an email address for an account you have access to. (Note: If you are already logged into your website, the form will pre-populate the form with your email address on file.).
- Enter your First Name, and optionally, enter your Last Name.
- Accept the Privacy Policy notice.
- Click the ‘Create Subscription’ button.
You should now see a message like the one shown below.
Note: I added a bit of CSS to get the boxes to align at the left, as shown above.
.cn-success {
margin-left: 15px;
}
- Pull up the email and click the ‘Verify’ button to verify your subscription.
At this point, you should see a ‘Subscription verified!’ banner across the top of your website.
Notifications for Specific Listing Types
If you have more than one Listing Type on your MyListing website, like many of us do, you will need customization outside of what the core plugin provides.
The customization is required because of how the MyListing theme was developed to handle specific taxonomies rather than a limitation of the Content Notify plugin.
For this customization, I’ve developed the ‘MyListing Add-on for Content Notify’.
Implementation
For the steps below, let’s assume you have at least two Listing Types published and at least one Listing published for each Listing Type.
- Add the MyListing Add-on for Content Notify to your website by following the provided instructions.
Once the add-on has been implemented, you will see a ‘Notifications’ entry under the ‘Listings’ menu item in your WordPress dashboard.
- Listings > Notifications > Add an entry for each Listing Type you have, matching the name exactly.
So, if you have a Listing Type named ‘Event’, you will also create a Notification entry named ‘Event’.
Once your entries are in place, you will notice the ‘Count’ is ‘0’ for each and we need this count to be ‘1’ for each, which tells us they are correctly registered with MyListing.
- Edit one of your Listings from your website’s backend (i.e., WordPress Dashboard).
- Using the ‘Listing Type’ dropdown briefly set your Listing to any other Listing Type and then switch right back to the original Listing Type.
- Save the Listing again by clicking the ‘Update’ button.
- Repeat the above steps for all of your Listing Types.
At this point, you should see a count of’1′ for each of your notification entries.
- Edit a Listing Type.
- Single Page > Content & Tabs.
- Add a ‘Shortcode’ block to either an existing tab or a new tab.
- In the content area of the shortcode block, add what’s shown in the same screenshot from the ‘Notifications for All Listings’ section.
Once the above steps are completed, you should see what is shown in the screenshot below on all your applicable Listings.
Subscription Testing
You would test the same way I outline the steps for the ‘Notifications for All Listings’ section, but with the added step of choosing your desired Listing Types to be notified about.
Admin Subscription Management
Another nice feature of Content Notify is the ability to create and manage subscriptions for yourself or your users, all from the backend.
I see this being super useful for several scenarios.
- You want to quickly create a subscription for yourself or other team members.
- You want to create a subscription for particular users or all of your users manually rather than including a form on your Listings.
- Website admins can quickly see how a user’s subscription is configured for troubleshooting purposes.
- and more.
