Scribe: Email subscriptions for Mango

Have you been waiting for Email subscriptions to be available in Mango blog? Well, wait no longer!

Plugin version:

1.0

Last Updated:

2009-04-08

Requires:

Mango Blog 1.3+, CFSchedule (if sandboxed)

Auto-install URL:

http://fusiongrokker.com/get/Scribe

Scribe does more than just send out some emails when you make a new post:

• ColdFusion Scheduled tasks are used to make sure emails don't go out before your post is published. Emails are only sent when a new post is published or when a draft becomes published; never when updating an existing published post or when a post is reverted from published status to draft status. (Caveat: published -> draft -> published will trigger a repeat email.)
  
• The email messages sent to your readers are customizable with templating on the settings page.
• Optionally use a custom email address for the FROM address. Defaults to the blog-default email address.
• There is an unsubscribe link in every email — if you include it on your template; included by default.
• The subscribe pod is available for pod-enabled themes, but for users without a pod-enabled theme, a custom event ("scribe-pod") is also available.

I also already have some plans for a 1.1 release, in the near future:

• Subscription management in admin – view and edit the list of subscribers
• Optional double-opt-in (require link-click from validation email before subscription is active)

Posted in Mango | My projects | 21 Responses  

21 responses:

• Brian Klaas Apr 10, 2009 at 8:27 AM Thanks for creating this plug-in, Adam. It's a great, and much-needed addition to Mango Blog!
• Seb Duggan Apr 10, 2009 at 9:47 AM Sorry Adam - just tried subscribing to your site, and it threw an error...
  
  Maybe a problem with rewritten URLs?
• Seb Duggan Apr 10, 2009 at 9:51 AM Yeah - it's sending me to /post/generic.cfm (the actual link is "generic.cfm"). Manually altering it to /generic.cfm fixed it...
  
  You'll need to hard-code the blog root into the form target.
• Adam Apr 10, 2009 at 9:54 AM Seb, thanks! I'll update the SVN and the zip real quick.
• Adam Apr 10, 2009 at 10:03 AM Ok, fixed that bug. Thanks for the report.
• Mark Aplet Apr 10, 2009 at 1:03 PM Awesome Adam! Really looking forward to the 1.1 release. I hope it's sooner than later ;)
• David Apr 10, 2009 at 4:45 PM Hi Adam,
  
  I put in a "From Email:" address and the blog email was still used.
  
  Am I missing soemthing, or is this a bug?
  
  Cheers.
  
  David
• Adam Apr 10, 2009 at 5:21 PM Hi David,
  
  Looks like that's a bug. I'll have it fixed in 1.1.
• Josh Swenson Apr 14, 2009 at 2:30 PM Adam,
  
  Thanks so much for your work on this. I've always used cfcblog but liked the slickness of mango better. The only reason I hadn't used mango for any of my clients was the subscribers feature.
  
  Well done.
• jax Jul 23, 2009 at 3:56 AM Seems there's a problem when using Railo and MySql 4.01
  Confirmation of subscriptions *always* fail. Looks like there is something funky going on with the sql statement (select 1 as row ...)
• jax Jul 23, 2009 at 4:38 PM Update: Tried it on a CF8 install with MSSQL express 2008. Confirming a subscription leads to a blank page.. and a failed confirmation as well.
• Korey Dec 17, 2009 at 8:54 PM I'm getting the same issue with CF8 and MySQL 5:
  
  Confirming a subscription leads to a blank page. It appears the following code is not rendering:
  
  if (local.result){
  event.data.message.setTitle("Activation Complete");
  event.data.message.setData("<p>Your subscription is now active! Thank you!</p>");
  
  When I try to activate again with the link from the email I get the failed activation page. Upon checking the DB, the email is being activated, but I'm not getting the confirmation page.
  
  Any suggestions?
• Korey Graham Dec 17, 2009 at 8:57 PM Update: I tried subscribing to this blog (fusiongrokker.com) and I'm getting the same blank page when clicking the activation link from the email. Perhaps something was accidentally changed in the last version update?
• Adam Tuttle Dec 17, 2009 at 9:41 PM @Korey Graham Thanks for the bug report. I'll look into it shortly.
• Adam Tuttle Jan 14, 2010 at 9:42 AM @Korey - I fixed that bug in 1.3.1 and it is included in version 1.4 released today: http://fusiongrokker.com/post/scribe-1-4
• David Mar 26, 2010 at 7:21 AM This doesn't seem to work with Railo. Has anyone tested or verified that? It installs nicely, and everything appears to work, the scheduled task is even created in Railo admin, however the only way I get an alert emailed to me is to manually run the scheduled task myself via the CF admin.
• Adam Mar 26, 2010 at 8:15 AM Hi David, thanks for the bug report. Perhaps there is a difference between the way Scheduled Jobs work in Rail versus Adobe ColdFusion. In ACF, if a job is scheduled for the current time or any time in the past, then it runs immediately. I wonder if that might not be the case with Railo.
• Matt Apr 21, 2010 at 4:19 PM Adam -
  I have a Scribe suggestion (if you're still looking to extend it):
  
  How hard would it be to allow subscribers to pick the Categories to which they want to subscribe? Therefore, they would only be emailed when a Post has been assigned to a category to which they are subscribed.
  
  Thoughts?
• Adam Apr 22, 2010 at 9:09 AM Matt, thanks for the suggestion. I may consider it at some point.
• Matt Apr 26, 2010 at 8:56 AM Thanks Adam.
  
  As a follow up question ...
  
  For some reason, subscriber emails stopped going out for me.
  
  Any suggestions on troubleshooting? Logs to look at? Other debugging suggestions?
  
  Many thanks in advance.
• Adam Apr 26, 2010 at 9:04 AM The first place I would look is Mango's error and warning logs; followed by the CF Administrator mail and error logs. If none of those proves helpful, there are a few more things we can check.