WordPress Notification with Scheduled Triggers 1

WordPress Notification with Scheduled Triggers

Are you annoyed by all those WordPress emails, notifying you about every single post or comment? With Scheduled Triggers (a Notification Plugin extension), you can build powerful and personalized scenarios for your very own WordPress notifications.

In this article, you will learn how to:

  • Install free WordPress Notification Plugin and set it up.
  • Add powerful Extensions.
  • Schedule Triggers and receive notifications how and when you want them.

Inbox zero with all those emails from WordPress? Yeah, right! We’ve all been there, but there is a super-simple solution – combine Notification Plugin for WordPress with our extensions and build your own way of receiving crucial information from your WordPress website.

Before we start, you really need to know what a Notification Plugin is. It is an easy-to-use and customizable plugin to give you control over your WordPress notifications. Notification Plugin is free and gives you basic (but still awesome!) functionality, with email customization, marge tags and different Triggers.

With our paid Extensions, you can do even more – like setting up a schedule to receive notifications on a given time of day, or adding different notification Carriers (Slack, Push, Mailgun, you name it).

Let’s get moving, we covered alternative solutions below!

Scheduling WordPress notifications

Start with installing the Notification Plugin. If you already have a plugin installed, skip to number 2. 

1. Install and set up Notification Plugin

Download and activate the free Notification Plugin from WordPress.org. In the free version, you get email notifications and webhook carriers.

WordPress admin dashboard, Plugins menu in the sidebar.
You can add Notification Plugin using the Plugins’ sidebar on WordPress.
Notification Plugin in WordPress Plugins.
The one with the green logo is the one you’re looking for!

PROTIP: You can disable default WordPress notifications emails from Notification Plugin settings. Works perfectly for the users who want to control all the notifications within Notification Plugin.

Notification Plugin settings – disabling default WordPress email notifications.

2. Add Scheduled Triggers Extension

Open Notifications menu from the sidebar. You can find your notifications, settings, and extensions there.

Adding Notification Plugin extension from WordPress sidebar.

Click Extensions and choose Scheduled Triggers. By selecting More Details, you’ll be transferred to BrackeSpace’s plugin page. You can buy a single Extension or couple Extensions in a bungle (you get a 14-day money-back guarantee, no question asked).

Scheduled Triggers – how to

Your Notification Plugin and Scheduled Triggers Extension are now all installed. Last thing you need to do is to set up our very own notifications’ scenario.

What is a Trigger and a Carrier?

There are two basics of Notification Plugin:

  • Trigger is an action that starts the notification chain.
  • Carrier is your notification destination.
Notification Plugin list of Triggers.
No jokes – Trigger list is huge!

Triggers are put into different categories. For example: in the Post trigger category, you find triggers related to posts, like Adding a new Post. When adding different extensions, the Trigger list grows even more.

Carrier can be a simple email, but also 3rd party apps like Slack, Twilio, Discord, or Twitter.

Scheduled Notification – setting up

The difference that Scheduled Notification Extension makes, is that you can add a timeframe to your notification.

For example, you’d like to send marketing emails to new users after a certain amount of time after registration.

  1. Open > Add New Notification.
    Adding new notification from Notification Plugin’s sidebar menu.
  1. Give your notification a name, for example: First marketing email
    Naming new notification in Notification Plugin.
  1. Select a Trigger > User : Default schedule
    Adding a Scheduled Trigger in Notification Plugin.
  1. Set up a Schedule > 3 Days After Registration Date.
    Setting up a schedule for notifications in Notification Plugin.

You’re almost done. Before adding a Carrier, you need to define a time window.

What is a “time window”?

Glad you asked. Time window defines a range within your object (in this example – a new user registration) can spark a trigger.

Defining time window for Scheduled Triggers in Notification Plugin.

If you want to send a notification 3 days after a user was registered, and the time window is set to 1 day, this will mean that it will match any user registered when the date was between 4 and 3 days ago.

Adding Carriers

Now, just add Carriers. You can add more than one. For example: marketing email for the user, and Discord massage for your marketing team.

  1. Add a Carrier, in this example, > Email.
Customizing notification message in Notification Plugin.
Customize the message using Merge Tags. The cheat sheet is on the right.
  1. You can add another Carrier to the same Trigger.
Icons of different Carriers in Notification Plugin.
One Trigger can spark notification with different Carriers.

Scheduled notifications on WordPress – how we use them

Scheduled Triggers Extensions works best with three predefined object types: User, Post and Page.

In our case, we combine Scheduled Triggers with Custom Fields Extensions, for advanced scenarios. Three hours before the post deadline, our content team receives Slack notification.

Using Custom Fields Extension for custom merge tags in schedule settings.
You can use custom merge tags for advanced scenarios.

To give you a different example: let’s say you add a Scheduled Trigger to notify when posts are still in review after 7 days from adding. This information can be carried as an email to a freelancing proofreader and a Slack notification, to an in-house Content Manager, that this job is overdue.

WordPress Notification with Scheduled Triggers 2
It’s that easy! 

Money-back Guarantee

WordPress Notification Plugin is and always will be free. Convenient and easy to use, Scheduled Triggers extension cost $69 a year, with a 14-day money-back guarantee and cancel-anytime policy. You also get one year of upgrades and support. The license is transferable. You can also buy extensions in a bundle. Check full pricing HERE.

What WordPress notification would YOU schedule? Leave a comment section below!

women check out slack integration with notification plugin

WordPress to Slack Integration with Notification Plugin (Super Easy)

Reduce your mailbox size and streamline communication with simple WordPress to Slack Integration. Choose your Triggers, and customize the message. And, yeah – you don’t need to code.

With over 18 million daily active users (yes, you read that right), Slack is THE ONE communication tool for work-from-home teams scattered across the globe. If Slack is your company hub, you could easily benefit from integrating WordPress communication directly into Slack. WordPress to Slack integration means less email clutter and total control over what’s essential.

Our free Notification Plugin has over 10,000 active WordPress installations (not 18 million, but hey!) and great reviews. 

In this article, you will find know how to:

  • Use the simplest way to receive WordPress notifications in Slack.
  • Choose the types of notifications you want to receive.
  • Set up Notification Plugin.

How to add WordPress notifications to Slack?

Below, you can find a step-by-step guide on how to add WordPress notifications to Slack. If you already use our Notification Plugin, skip to number 2.

1. Download the Notification Plugin

First off, download and activate the free Notification Plugin. In the free version, you get email notifications and webhook carriers. The Notification Plugin for WordPress is super-easy to use, fully customizable, and can be integrated with loads of third-party apps using Extensions (like Discord, Push, and, yes, Slack). 

WordPress admin dashboard, Plugins menu item in the sidebar.
You probably did this before. Add Notification Plugin using the Plugins sidebar on WordPress.
 Notification Plugin in WordPress Plugins.
That’s the one, with great reviews!

2. Configure your plugin

As you can see, there is a new position in the sidebar called Notifications. Here you can configure your personal use cases. Go ahead, and jump into Extensions. There you can find a list of installed extensions. We have already installed our Slack extension.

Notification Plugin dashboard in WordPress sidebar.
We didn’t lie. There are a ton of Extensions to choose from.

Navigate to the Settings menu to configure your Slack extension:

 Adding Slack integration to Notification Plugin.
Authenticate your team’s Slack account.

3. Adding notifications to WordPress

You can easily come back to the sidebar and Add New Notifications.

Configuring Notification Plugin by adding notifications Triggers and Carriers.

It’s a good idea to give your new notification a name, so it will be easy to find. What’s left is to configure your Triggers and Carriers.

Triggers are actions that – well – trigger the notification. We categorized them by type, starting with Posts. So, a trigger can be a user adding a new draft or reviewing and approving the post. It also can be a user asking for personal data deletion or your Editor changing tag names.

The list of triggers categories includes:

  • Post
  • Page
  • Category
  • Tag
  • User
  • Media
  • Comment
  • Privacy
  • and others

Carriers, on the other hand, are receivers of the information. Email is a carrier, and Slack is also one.

Add your Trigger and Carrier – in this example; we use Slack. 

Type of Carriers that are available in Notification Plugin.

PROTIP: One Trigger can send notifications to a couple of Carriers so that you can tailor your notifications to particular needs.

Configuring Notification Plugin’s Slack extension.
When Carrier is added, you can customize the message. Check the Merge Tags on the right – you can copy them directly to your notification setup.

And… that’s it! Just Save it in the top-right corner, and you are done!

Receiving WordPress notification in Slack.
This is how it looks in Slack. Neat, right?

WordPress to Slack Notification – our use case

We use our WordPress to Slack notifications to review blog posts like the one you are reading. When Editors add drafts, our technical staff gets notified in a dedicated Slack channel to review new pieces of content. 

But, the same Trigger sends an email to our freelance content manager, who is not using our company’s Slack.

At the end, when a new blog post is published, our CEO also gets a Slack notification (different Trigger, same integration).

Thanks to this simple integration, we save a lot of time, and everybody stays in the communication loop. Setting up our WordPress to Slack integration, with our specific needs in mind, took less than 15 minutes.

WordPress to Slack Integration with Notification Plugin (Super Easy) 3

Money-back Guarantee

Notification Plugin is and always will be free. Our time-saving WordPress to Slack extension costs $49 a year, with a 14-day money-back guarantee and cancel-anytime policy. You also get one year of upgrades and support. The license is transferable. You can also buy extensions in a bundle. Check full pricing HERE.

What are your use cases for notifications integrations? Leave a message in the comment section below!

three colleagues look at the computer and laugh

WooCommerce Email Customisation: (3 Ways Made Easy)

Do you want to customize how your WooCommerce emails look or how they are sent?

WooCommerce sends two types of emails: 

  1. Transactional emails to customers.
  2. Notification emails to store administrators.

Transactional emails provide customers with details about their order’s status, for example, confirming a successful payment or when their order shipped. 

Read More

How to Send Email Notification on Comment Reply in WordPress

Learn how to send Email notifications on comments’ replies using the free Notification plugin. You can use this approach to send an email to anyone who needs to know about a new reply in existing comments.

Watch this step-by-step video tutorial or scroll down for the written guide with screenshots.

Video tutorial How to Send Email Notification on Comment Reply

Guide

Install the Plugin

If you already have the plugin installed you can skip to the next step

You can download the plugin directly from your WordPress Dashboard.

WordPress Dashboard ⇒ Plugins Add new Notification – Custom Notifications and Alerts for WordPress.

add-plugin

Add a New Notification

You need to define a new notification so the plugin knows when it needs to send it and to who.

Name the Notification

In order to add a new notification, you will need to go to Notifications Add New Notification.

On the new screen, at the top you can name your new notification, it’s recommended to name it to something that you will remember. You can name it however you like, don’t worry this will not appear anywhere else.

name-notification

Select the Trigger

The next field you need to fill in is the Trigger. This is basically most of the things you can do in WordPress. Do you want to receive an email when a user signs up? Or do you want to be informed when one of your editors publishes a new post? Or when someone buys a new product? Don’t worry, we got you covered.

For this tutorial, we will select Comment replied. This essentially means that each time someone else replies to an existing comment on our WordPress site, we want to send an email notification to the person who posted the first comment.

For example, in one of my posts, I have a comment by a user called Peter. Then a new user called Kevin goes to my post and sees Peter’s comment. Kevin wants to reply to Peter’s comments so when Kevin does, I want to make sure that Peter receives an email notification that someone replied to his comment.

comment-peter-min
Example of an existing comment in one of my posts

Important: you can only select one trigger per notification. In case you want to select an additional trigger you will need to add a new notification.

trigger-comment-reply-min

Select the Carrier

This tutorial covers only Email carriers (in case you are interested in a different carrier you can see our tutorials here).

The next option you need to select is Carriers, in other words, which is basically where you want to receive your notification. For this example, we will use Email as our carrier.

carrier-comment-notification-min

Email Setup

So far we have named our notification, we selected our trigger and email as our carrier. So now let’s set up the content of this email, and who will be the recipients of it.

When you select Email in the carriers section you will see new options to be filled:

Subject

This is the name of the email. In case this email is for your users or customers remember to give a relevant name because it is the first impression, it is the reason the recipient will, or will not open it.

subject-comment-notification-min

Body

The next part you need to fill in the body of the email. This works as a traditional text editor. You can personalize it as you want. You can add links, modify the size of the fonts, change font color, and many more.

body-comment-notification-min

If you want you can use this template:

Subject: Someone replied to your comment in the post {post_title}!

Body:

Hello {parent_comment_author_user_display_name},

Someone replied to your comment in the post: {post_title}!:

The reply to your comment is:

Your comment: {parent_comment_content}

Reply by {comment_author_user_display_name}: {comment_content}

If you want to read and reply to this comment you can do it here: {post_permalink}

Cheers!

Merge Tags (Optional)

Depending on the trigger you selected in the steps before, in the right sidebar of the window, you will see some options called Merge Tags.

Merge Tags are a tiny bit of dynamic information that is taken automatically by WordPress. For example, when someone signs up to your website, most likely he already provided his name or email address. Instead of manually typing each time of the emails, we can use those merge tags to generate the content dynamically.

For example, for this Comment Reply Notification Email, I will use the tags:

  • {post_title}: it will show the title of the post where there is a new comment
  • {parent_comment_author_user_display_name}: it will show the name of the person who will receive the email
  • {parent_comment_content}: it will show the original comment that the user who will receive the email made
  • {comment_content}: it will show the new reply to the existing comment
  • {post_permalink}: it will show the link of the post where the comments were made
  • {comment_author_user_display_name}: it will show the name of the person to reply to an existing comment

The available merge tags for the trigger Comment added are:

COMMENT

  • Comment ID: {comment_ID}
  • Comment content: {comment_content}
  • Comment HTML content: {comment_content_html}
  • Comment status: {comment_status}
  • Comment type: {comment_type}
  • Is Comment a reply?: {comment_is_reply}
  • Comment date and time: {comment_datetime}

COMMENT ACTIONS

  • Comment approve URL: {comment_approve_action_url}
  • Comment trash URL: {comment_trash_action_url}
  • Comment delete URL: {comment_delete_action_url}
  • Comment mark as spam URL: {comment_spam_action_url}

COMMENT AUTHOR

  • Comment author IP: {comment_author_IP}
  • Comment author user browser agent: {comment_author_user_agent}
  • Comment author URL: {comment_author_url}
  • Comment author user ID: {comment_author_user_ID}
  • Comment author user email: {comment_author_user_email}
  • Comment author user display name: {comment_author_user_display_name}
  • Comment author user avatar: {comment_author_user_avatar}
  • Comment author user avatar url: {comment_author_user_avatar_url}

PARENT COMMENT

  • Parent comment ID: {parent_comment_ID}
  • Parent comment content: {parent_comment_content}
  • Parent comment status: {parent_comment_status}
  • Parent comment type: {parent_comment_type}

PARENT COMMENT AUTHOR

  • Parent comment author IP: {parent_comment_author_IP}
  • Parent comment user agent: {parent_comment_user_agent}
  • Parent comment author URL: {parent_comment_author_url}
  • Parent comment author user ID: {parent_comment_author_user_ID}
  • Parent comment author user email: {parent_comment_author_user_email}
  • Parent comment author user display name: {parent_comment_author_user_display_name}
  • Parent comment author user avatar: {parent_comment_author_user_avatar}
  • Parent comment author user avatar url: {parent_comment_author_user_avatar_url}

POST

  • Post ID: {post_ID}
  • Post permalink: {post_permalink}
  • Post title: {post_title}
  • Post slug: {post_slug}
  • Post content: {post_content}
  • Post excerpt: {post_excerpt}
  • Post status: {post_status}
  • Post Type: {post_type}
  • Post creation date and time: {post_creation_datetime}
  • Post modification date and time: {post_modification_datetime}

POST AUTHOR

  • Post author user ID: {post_author_user_ID}
  • Post author user login: {post_author_user_login}
  • Post author user email: {post_author_user_email}
  • Post author user nicename: {post_author_user_nicename}
  • Post author user display name: {post_author_user_display_name}
  • Post author user first name: {post_author_user_firstname}
  • Post author user last name: {post_author_user_lastname}

CUSTOM FIELDS: only available with the Custom Fields extension.

Cool Tip: You can use these merge tags in both the Subject and the Body of the email.

merge-tags-comment-notification-min
Body with merge tags

Recipients

The last step in setting the Email Notification is to include the recipients of this email. You will see two columns: Type and Recipient.

TypeRecipient
Email/Merge TagYou can write here any email that you want, for this tutorial we will use the merge tag {parent_comment_author_user_email}
Useful for: general and automatic repetitive actions like sending automatically a Welcome Email to each new subscriber.
AdministratorThis can’t be changed, this will be by default the administrator of the website.
Useful for: informing an admin of the site about an important update or error in the website.
UserA dropdown of existing users, you can only select one option.
Useful for: informing a specific user about a change on his/her account.
User IDYou need to use a valid user ID, or you can use the merge tag {user_ID}
Useful for: informing specific users about a change on their account.
RoleA dropdown of existing roles on the WordPress Site, you can only select one option.
Useful for: informing a change to a specific group of users.

Tip: you can add as many recipients as you want

For this tutorial, we will use the merge tag {parent_comment_author_user_email} which means that each time someone else replies to an existing comment on our WordPress site, we want to send an email notification to the person who posted the first comment.

After filling the recipient’s fields just click save.

recipient-comment-notification-min

Test Your New Comment Reply Notification

An additional final step that is recommended is to test your comment reply notification.

To do this you can just simply go to an existing post in your WordPress site which has an existing comment and simply add a test reply.

Let’s go back to our previous example of Peter and Kevin. I will assume that I’m Peter and I will receive an email notification in my email [email protected] After Kevin replies to my comment (and after the comment is approved by the site owner), I will receive your personalized email in seconds!

Important: the notification will only be sent after the new comment has been approved by the website admin! Otherwise, it will not be triggered!

test-comment-reply-notification-min

And that’s it! That’s all you need to set up a new Comment Reply Notification.

How to Replace the Default WordPress Welcome Email With a Custom Message 4

How to Replace the Default WordPress Welcome Email With a Custom Message

Learn how to replace the default WordPress welcome email with a custom message using the free Notification plugin. You can use this approach to send an email to anyone who needs to know about the new account registration.

Watch this step-by-step video tutorial or scroll down for the written guide with screenshots.

Video tutorial How to Set Up an WordPress Welcome Email Notification

Guide

Install the Plugin

If you already have the plugin installed you can skip to the next step

You can download the plugin directly from your WordPress Dashboard.

WordPress Dashboard ⇒ Plugins Add new Notification – Custom Notifications and Alerts for WordPress.

add-plugin

Add a New Notification

You need to define a new notification so the plugin knows when it needs to send it and to who.

Name the Notification

In order to add a new notification, you will need to go to Notifications Add New Notification.

On the new screen, at the top you can name your new notification, it’s recommended to name it to something that you will remember. You can name it however you like, don’t worry this will not appear anywhere else.

name-notification

Select the Trigger

The next field you need to fill in is the Trigger. This is basically most of the things you can do in WordPress. Do you want to receive an email when a user signs up? Or do you want to be informed when one of your editors publishes a new post? Or when someone buys a new product? Don’t worry, we got you covered.

We have added the most common WordPress actions, probably won’t need anything else than this, but in case you do, you or your developer can register your own triggers based on any WordPress actions.

Important: you can only select one trigger per notification. In case you want to select an additional trigger you will need to add a new notification.

trigger

For this example, we will select one of the most common triggers – User Registration. This essentially means that we want to send an email each time someone signs up to our WordPress website.

Select the Carrier

This tutorial covers only Email carriers (in case you are interested in a different carrier you can see our tutorials here).

The next option you need to select is Carriers, in other words, which is basically where you want to receive your notification. For this example, we will use Email as our carrier.

carrier

Email Setup

So far we have named our notification, we selected our trigger and email as our carrier. So now let’s set up the content of this email, and who will be the recipients of it.

When you select Email in the carriers section you will see new options to be filled:

Subject

This is the name of the email. In case this email is for your users or customers remember to give a relevant name because it is the first impression, it is the reason the recipient will, or will not open it.

Body

The next part you need to fill in the body of the email. This works as a traditional text editor. You can personalize it as you want. You can add links, modify the size of the fonts, change font color, and many more.

body-email

Merge Tags (Optional)

Depending on the trigger you selected in the steps before, in the right sidebar of the window, you will see some options called Merge Tags.

Merge Tags are a tiny bit of dynamic information that is taken automatically by WordPress. For example, when someone signs up to your website, most likely he already provided his name or email address. Instead of manually typing each time of the emails, we can use those merge tags to generate the content dynamically.

For example, for this Welcome Email, I’m setting up I will use the trigger user registration, the tag {user_login} which will display in the final email as John or Kevin_12, depending on how the user signed up on the website.

The available merge tags for the trigger user registration are:

DATE:

  • User registration date: {user_registered_datetime}

USER:

  • User ID: {user_ID}
  • User login: {user_login}
  • User email: {user_email}
  • User role: {user_role}
  • User avatar: {user_avatar}
  • User password setup link: {user_password_setup_link}

CUSTOM FIELDS: only available with the Custom Fields extension.

Cool Tip: You can use these merge tags in both the Subject and the Body of the email.

merge-tags

Recipients

The last step in setting the Email Notification is to include the recipients of this email. You will see two columns: Type and Recipient.

TypeRecipient
Email/Merge TagYou can write here any email that you want, or you can use a merge tag like {user_email} to notify a user.
Useful for: general and automatic repetitive actions like sending automatically a Welcome Email to each new subscriber.
AdministratorThis can’t be changed, this will be by default the administrator of the website.
Useful for: informing an admin of the site about an important update or error in the website.
UserA dropdown of existing users, you can only select one option.
Useful for: informing a specific user about a change on his/her account.
User IDYou need to use a valid user ID, or you can use the merge tag {user_ID}
Useful for: informing specific users about a change on their account.
RoleA dropdown of existing roles on the WordPress Site, you can only select one option.
Useful for: informing a change to a specific group of users.

Tip: you can add as many recipients as you want

After filling the recipient’s fields just click save.

Disable Default WordPress emails

Lastly, don’t forget to disable the default WordPress emails (otherwise the awesome Notifications you added might not work as expected). To do this you need to go to the WordPress Dashboard Notifications Settings Integration Select the default WordPress emails you want to disable. Then scroll down and click the save button.

disable-emails

And that’s it! That’s all you need to set up a new Email Notification.