I contribute to a few other blogs out there as I’m able, all of which are WordPress-based like this one. A seemingly simple function has been lacking in my mind, and the community seems to agree with me. But for some unknown reason, the answer has not been produced until now.
My first WordPress plugin, Notify on Draft Post is now in its first public release. Here’s the rundown:
This plugin has now been accepted and is available for download via WordPress.org’s plugin site.
*** This tool has reached its usefulness. Version 2.2 of WordPress now includes the functionality natively. ***
**Release v.1.0.1
Cleaned up some of the comments within the code itself. It should be well documented by this point!
Features v.1.0
Check that user *can’t* Publish a post on their own (Contributor, for instance)
Selectable “ready to publish” flag for submission
WP Moderator notification email (admin email)
Installation:
The file notify-draft.php must be put within the wp-content/plugins/ directory of your WordPress installation. Activate the plugin from the administration interface…done!
Roadmap:
I would like to add some options for Notify on Draft Post to allow the selection of an alternate email or multiples. By default, the product utilizes the site’s defined “admin” email address.
Great idea, Olaf!
I don’t need it now… but I am sure it will be useful sometime in the future.
Hello,
This sounds interesting as I run a multi-author blog. Just to calrify; is it only the blog owner who gets an email notification or is it all users that can publish posts?
thanks
/Manne
That’s right! The email notification is specifically sent to
get_settings('admin_email'). In the future, I intend to change that to accept an alternate, or list of emails of your choice. Until then, you can always change your admin email setting to a group email if you need it.Thanks for the reply.
I tried it out and noticed that swedish characters arent being displayed correctly in the email.
awesome, great plugin! I’ve been searching for this as my future site desperately needed it!
Olaf,
Great plug-in! How’s it going with the roadmap for multiple users getting notified? I may be able to lend some of my coding skills to help you out with that?
Okay – so I thought I’d have this done by now and would be able to reply to your comment with an update. That’s not exactly going as planned. If you would like to contribute to the plugin, I would gladly take the help. That is, after all, the true spirit of this open source thing going on around us. All I ask is that you be respectful of my wish to review the code before updating the WordPress Plugins site with your additions. You will, of course, get due credit for your contributions.
In the mean time, I will continue to work with this feature myself as I have time. It was an actual need of mine, but the success of the first release of “Notify on Draft Post” downgraded it to a mere want.
I also still need to address Manne’s issues with extended character sets. The problem there lies in PHP’s implementation of
sprintf(). That’s just a matter of my learning internationalization concepts in PHP, which I have very little experience in. Coincidentally, I frequently use extended characters myself in talking with friends in parts of Scandinavia – it just hasn’t come to my attention through use of my own PHP code.Hello there,
the plugin is great, im using it on my website and its working fine. However, im now trying to develop a new website based on WordPress MU and im trying to adapt the plugin to that new system. Unfortunately, my coding skills are weak and im failng to do that. Maybe someone here could help me…
The problem is that when i get an email about a new draft, the email does not contain any information about the drafted post – just its permalink, while i would like to see the author and the post content as well… so yeah, if someone knows how to do it, pls help. tnx.
Great idea! I am running a couple of blogs that could use it!
By the way folks – I won’t likely be updating this plugin as the WordPress 2.2 code includes the ability natively. Let me know if there’s still a real need. Maybe I can integrate with the built in stuff should it be lacking something…
I’m currently running WordPress 2.2.1 and can’t seem to find where the automatic notification of draft posts is built in. Great plugin by the way!
i’m using 2.3.2 and can’t find this functionality. i’m posting as a contributor and no editors/admins are getting notified. wondering if i might be able to still use this plugin.
having the ‘pending review’ functionality is borderline useless without notifying someone that new content needs to be approved.
Hei! Great Plugin, but i like to chance the role form contributer to editor. How can i change this?
Thanks!
Markus
@Meerblickzimmer:
The problem with changing the action for editors as you ask is that editors apparently have the ability to publish pages. My plugin integration doesn’t check to see if the current user is a contributor, it just checks to see whether the current user has the ability to publish posts. If not, then the “notify” check mark is presented. If you need to modify the rights of your editors so that they cannot publish content without approval, you would need to use another plugin for that. One exists, but the name fails me at the moment.
hmm.. doesn’t appear to work for me – or it is taking a long time to send the email notify
any suggestions?
This is exactly what i was looking for.
This is an ace plug-in
Great plugin! Just what I was looking for!
Is there a way to have this always turned on, so that the admin always gets a email to approve the post?
It is always turned on for anyone without the post ability. That is, the option to submit for approval is always there. I must be missing the point of your message – can you explain?
Olaf, intead of de contributors having to press the selectbox. Is there an option to always send the admin a notification, when there is a new draft post. So without the contributor having to click the selectbox.
Hi,
thanks for the plugin! You say, that this functionality is encluded in WP since 2.2. Actually, I never found it there and used Notify-on-draft-post even in WP 2.5.
Now, in 2.7, it breaks the article saving, so perhaps it’s time to switch to the native WP feature. My problem is, that I haven’t found out so far, how to switch this behaviour on (send an email to an admin, if a contributor wrote something). Could you give me a hint, where I’m missing something?
Best,
Boldy
This worked up to version 2.6; now I am on 2.7 and it does not send the notifications. Any plans to update this?