While Joomla is a very poweful CMS, sometimes it feels as if it lacks some basic features. For example, many of our customers ask us what sort of settings they should change in order to automatically notify their registered users (subscribers) of a new article that is posted on their Joomla website. Our answer is “There is not such setting, but we can create it for you”. At this point our customers become mad at the Joomla developers, but at the same time, happy because we will create this feature for them.
So how do we do it?
We just modify the configuration file to include a new setting: $notify_registered_users_on_new_article, which can be 0 or 1. By default, it is assumed to be 0, which means there are no mails sent when a new article is posted. If this variable is set to 1, then we send an email to every subscriber when there is a new article posted.
Afterwards, we add “a hook” to the PHP code that saves the article in the database (on success), to check if the above flag is true, and we send an email to all the subscribers. The email usually consists of the following:
– The from part: The name of the website.
– The from email: The email address set in the general settings of the website.
– The subject of the email: Usually we set this to “Name of the website: New article posted”, or “Name of the website: Check out our latest article”
– The body of the email: The body of the email usually contains the name of the article, as well as an excerpt of that article. (Note: The body of the article usually starts with “Hi Subscriber First Name!”).
We charge 3 hours for creating the above feature for your website. Please check our excellent fees and contact us if you want us to do this work for you. As always, we’re ready and eager to serve you!