(Note that this tutorial is appropriate for MT versions 2.661 and earlier.)

Say you want to send an email to your weblog readers when you update your blog, so they know to go to your site. There are various ways to do this. Movable Type has a built-in email notification feature. Unfortunately it is probably the least robust of the many wonderful MT features as I will explain shortly. With some serious hacking of the code the feature becomes more functional. Another option (which I prefer) is Bloglet, a third party service that can seamlessly provide email notifications for your site.

1. Movable Type's built-in Email Notification feature. Using MT's email notification feature, you...

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I tweaked the content of the new comment notification email to add a couple convenient links - one to the main index page of the blog to which the comment was posted and one directly to the approve url for the comment. FYI, I found the "blog_url => $blog->site_url" in MT/*/CMS.pm and edited its syntax for Submission.pm

add to MT/plugins/Blacklist/lib/Blacklist/App/Submission.pm around line 745 or so:              blog_url => $blog->site_url, add to MT/plugins/Blacklist/tmpl/new-comment.tmpl (insert as line 1): Visit <TMPL_VAR NAME=BLOG_NAME> at <TMPL_VAR NAME=BLOG_URL>

Not using MT-Blacklist...

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Question

Whenever I send out a new entry notification, I'm getting multiple copies of the email. Does this mean my subscribers are getting multiple copies as well?

Answer

To protect your subscribers' addresses from being exposed to others on the list, Movable Type uses the author's email address (as specified in the author's Profile) in the TO: and FROM: fields, and then places the subscriber addresses in the BCC: field.

This means you, as the author of the entry, will receive at least one copy of each notification email which is sent out. If...

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Email. Can't live with it. Can't live without it -- although many of us wish we could.

Despite the introduction of new tools such as weblogs, wikis, aggregators and instant messaging, and the growing notion that email is "broken," it still remains the de-facto, baseline, catch-all choice for online communications and collaboration.

In this chapter we'll delve into various ways that email is utilized with Movable Type.

Back to top | Permalink | Comments (0) ...

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Email notification

This option specifies your preference regarding receiving comment notification emails. Only when attention is required will send you emails only when you receive a comment that is held for moderation.

Junk comments will never spawn a comment notification email, regardless of the setting.

Permalink

...

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Question

When someone tries to add their address to my notification list, this error comes up:

Email notifications have not been configured! The weblog owner needs to set the EmailVerificationSecret configuration variable.

Answer

If you wish to add a form to your site so that visitors can sign up for site update notifications, you will also need to set the EmailVerificationSecret variable in mt-config.cgi1. This setting allows Movable Type to secure the notification signup process so that visitors have to verify their email addresses.

Here are the steps to enable...

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Sending Notifications

Problem

You want to send out a notification when new content is posted to your weblog.

Solution

In the Edit Entry screen of the post you wish to notify subscribers about, click the Notification tab and press Send.

Discussion

Movable Type includes the ability to easily send an email notification to readers to alert them of a new post.

Notifications are never sent automatically when you post a new entry. They are sent from a small form found on the Notifications tab of the Edit Entry screen assuming you have been granted Send Notifications permission.

In the Notification tab,...

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Question

Someone commented on or sent a trackback to my blog, and I never received the notification email.

Answer

Note: There was a bug introduced in version 3.14 which prevented notifications for moderated comments from being sent out. Please upgrade to version 3.16 or higher to eliminate this bug as a possible cause for this issue.

Check Settings

• Make sure you have specified a valid email address in your Author Profile.

• Make sure you have checked the appropriate options on the Settings > Feedback screen for Email notification, for both Comments...

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Question

I published a new entry, but no one on my notification list received the email telling them about it.

Answer

Note: There was a bug introduced in version 3.15 which affected the send notification feature. Please upgrade to the latest version of Movable Type to eliminate this bug as a possible cause for this issue.

Have You Sent the Notification?

The notifications for new entries are not sent out automatically, so make sure you have sent the notification after publishing your entry:

Navigate to the Edit Entry screen of the entry for...

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Managing Notifications

Problem

You need to manage the list of email notification subscribers to your weblog.

Solution

Click the Notifications button on the Weblog Toolbar.

Discussion

You can view and manage the list of subscribers in the Notifications section of Movable Type. You must be granted Edit Address Book permission to manage notifications.

This will be particularly helpful in dealing with bouncing and expired email addresses. You also have the option of adding email addresses manually if necessary. (Be nice and get their permission before you add them.)

Movable Type does not have a...

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Enabling Notifications

Problem

You want to allow your readers to sign up to receive e-mail notifications.

Solution

Place a notification subscription form in your layout.

Discussion

Movable Type includes the ability to easily send an email notification to readers to alert them of new posts.

You can use the mt-add-notify.cgi script, along with a small HTML form in your templates, to provide simple subscription services to readers.

mt-add-notify.cgi allows readers to subscribe to and unsubscribe from a weblog's notifications list after a confirmation step to check that the...

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Required: MT3x

Marie b. asks if there's a way to stop MT from emailing you your own comments. There was back for 2.6 and 2.6x, and I posted that here, along with the info for stopping Blacklist from doing the same thing here and then again here for Blacklist v1.62.

Last year when MT 3.x came out, all that went out the window. I spent weeks trying to hack 3.0D and never figured it out - at which time I threw in the towel. Sure, it's frustrating to get my own comments emailed to me, and it's a pain in the ass, but the alternative was not getting anyone's comments emailed to me. That's just not an option since I like to reply to people who comment on my sites. Thankfully, marie b. brought...

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MT can be configured to send an email notification when new comments are posted. Sometimes it is useful to CC this notification to an alternate address. You can accomplish this with a teeny hack to lib/MT/App/Comments.pm as follows:

Find the first line and insert the second line directly beneath it:

my %head = ( To => $author->email, Bcc => 'email@domain.com',

FYI, you can alternately use CC and/or multiple comma-separated email addresses.

NOTE: There are TWO instances of this code in Comments.pm. Be sure to edit them BOTH!

If you are using MT-Blacklist, you can configure this plugin to add admins and send new comment notifications to them (in...

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I've released an update to MT-Notifier [ Download].

This version fixes the problem with sending multiple email notifications to those subscribed to entry notifications. Please note that the default behavior has not changed. Let me repeat: If you do not change a setting, your installation may send multiple notifications on the same entry. This is by design.

One reason for sending multiple notifications on the same entry is so that if you update an existing entry it will notify your subscribers. Some people may want this functionality, so it is still available - and in fact is the default behavior. If you do not want this to happen, but instead only want to send one notification per...

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Adding a New Notification Service to Ping

Problem

You want to automatically notify an additional ping service of an update to your weblog.

Solution

Add the notification service's ping URL to the list under the "Publicity/Remote Interfaces" section of the New Entry Defaults Settings tab.

Discussion

Notification services track which weblogs have been updated and when. This is achieved through alerts or "pings" to the service when they've been changed.

Movable Type has the built-in functionality to optionally ping these services with each new entry post. To manage these settings...

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Configuring Outbound Email Services

Problem

You want to use one of Movable Type's outbound email features and need to configure them.

Solution

Use the MailTransfer directive along with either the SendMailPath or SMTPServer directives based on your server's environment.

Discussion

Movable Type makes smart enough choices for default mail configuration settings that in many cases you will not be required to change anything.

Without any changes to the configuration, MT uses sendmail for outbound email services. By default it will look for sendmail in three standard locations: /usr/lib/sendmail...

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MT-Blacklist will override the Kalsey Notification hack shown here in #17. The fix for this is located here. Piece of cake, if you're ok with hacking the source code. I'm reprinting it here in case the original site goes down for some reason.

Open Blacklist.pm to line 2395 and you will see the following:

MT::Mail->send(\%head, $body);

Place the following code in its place:

MT::Mail->send(\%head, $body) unless $author->email eq $comment->email;

Upload the file where it needs to go, make sure your permissions are correct, and that should be it.

Related Entries: • Blacklist 1.62 vs Comments Notification Hack • MTBlacklist • Comment styling • Live Comment Preview

Posted by Iki at February 20,...

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Question

The page my visitors see after they join the notifications list is too plain; I'd like to have it match the look of my site. How can I change this?

Answer

Currently, this page is controlled by the underlying code, rather than by a template in the system.

If you are comfortable modifying Perl code, the text for this page is contained within lib/MT/App/NotifyList.pm.

One thing you can control without modifying the Perl files is the page users are sent to after confirming their email address. The redirect is controlled from within the...

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Updated MT-Notifier to include the change that apparently was lost earlier. Stand-alone subscription forms should work now.

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Question

Sometimes my commenters don't leave a URL, so I want to show their email address instead. How can I display these?

Answer

The default templates use the <MTCommentAuthorLink> tag to provide a link for each commenter. In version 3.16 of Movable Type, the default behavior for displaying email addresses was changed. Now, the rules for the linking are as follows: • If the author has entered a URL, the author name will be a link to that URL. • If no URL was entered, display the author name without a link.

You can override these rules to also...

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