Customize WordPress Emails and Alerts – Better Notifications for WP

1. 01Upload the ‘bnfw’ plugin folder to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory or install it via your WordPress Admin.
2. 02Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
3. 03Use the settings in the new ‘Notifications’ Menu item in the sidebar to configure the plugin.
4. 04(Optional) Read our article on how to improve email delivery in WordPress .
5. 05Test by creating a notification with some shortcodes .

Full Documentation for BNFW can be found here .

Is this plugin compatible with the new Block Editor (Gutenberg) in WordPress 5?

Yes and no. Most notifications work but full support can’t be guaranteed for all notifications at the moment. Full support is on the roadmap but for the time being, I’d recommend using the Classic Editor plugin with BNFW.

What are shortcodes? Where can I use them in this plugin?

Shortcodes are text in square brackets that output content of some kind. For example, if you want to add the content of a post to a notification for ‘New Post Published’, you can use the [post_content] shortcode to display this in the email that is sent out.

Shortcodes can be used in the ‘Subject’ and ‘Message Body’ of your notifications, except for a select few (due to a restriction in WordPress).

A handy list of shortcodes you can use is available here .

What are some scenarios this plugin could be used for?

Outreach: A blog/news site with hundreds of subscribers and want to use it to alert them of new blog posts. Communication: A small, internal WordPress site and use it to alert staff of new posts or comments. Monitor: A website for an awesome new product or service and use it for notifications of pingbacks and trackbacks. Security: To receive alerts of password reset requests and their corresponding user. The possibilities are endless!

Does this plugin work with anti-spam plugins, such as Akismet?

Yes! There is an option for suppressing comments marked as SPAM in the plugin settings.

Does this plugin and the add-ons work with Multisite?

Yes! Full support for WordPress Multisite was added in 1.6.13, alongside the release of the Multisite Add-on .

Can users create their own email notifications?

Not using BNFW. If you want to let users create their own email notifications/subscriptions/alerts, check out my other plugin: Content Notify .

Notifications aren’t coming through!

First of all, follow this article about how to find out what might be causing the problem. Additionally, please take a look at this help document to see how you might improve email delivery when using Better Notifications for WP.

Many hosts place a limit on the number of emails that can be sent out within an hour so this may also cause some delay in emails arriving. This article has a fairly extensive list of hosts and their corresponding email rate limits that’s worth checking out. Alternatively, please check with your host directly to find out what your limit is.

If you’re still having problems, please drop me a line in the Free Support Forums and I’ll do my best to help.

Some of my shortcodes aren’t working!

It’s possible you’re inserting a shortcode into a notification that cannot use it. For example: the ‘New Category’ email notification cannot use any of the author or time shortcodes as WordPress only stores the category name, category slug and category description in the database by default. It’s also worth checking the spelling and underscores in any shortcodes as well as if they are wrapped in square brackets [] .

Other emails from WordPress / other plugins are being messed up!

WordPress, by default, sends all emails in Plain Text. If you’d like to include code or use the WYSIWYG editor as part of Better Notifications for WP in your emails, you can change this to HTML using the global setting in Better Notification for WordPress. This can be found under the ‘Notifications > Settings’ screen. Changing this global email format setting will affect how all emails are sent out from WordPress however, so you may experience formatting issues with emails sent out from other plugins if you change the email format setting in this way. If you do, change this setting to Plain Text. You can also set the email format on a per-notification basis when setting-up a new Notification. The caveat is that WordPress will only either allow setting the email format globally (for all emails) or individually for anything that’s non-transactional.

Custom Post Type ‘X’ isn’t showing in the list of available custom post types

This is most likely because it’s public setting is set to false . Try changing this and see if it shows up in the list. If the custom post type has been created by a plugin and is set to private (such as TablePress ), you’ll need to get in touch with the plugin author to see if they’ll consider changing it to public instead so that BNFW can send out notifications for it.

Can I translate this plugin?

Yes, of course! The plugin is completely translation-friendly and if you send me your .po file, I’ll make sure to include it in the plugin and credit you in the changelog.

Where do I report security bugs found in this plugin?

Please report security bugs found in the source code of the Better Notification for WP plugin through the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program . The Patchstack team will assist you with verification, CVE assignment, and notify the developers of this plugin.